Apocalypse Now!
by Star1086
Summary: It's the freaken Apocalypse.
1. Chapter 1

Yeah, it's an end of the world fic. I've had this for a while so I thought maybe I'd revisit it now that we're on a two week break and my other fic is finally done. It's weird having free time. I had this plotted out like months ago but I have no clue if I'll actually continue this. No big spoilers, I'm thinking this is set during Season one-ish time. All feedback welcomed.

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><p>She's running so hard for so long that when she finally stops to plant her hands on her knees to suck air into her lungs it feels like burning hot sulfur. She lifts her head to see if he's caught up with her before she's lifted straight off her feet with a thud.<p>

There's no time to react when she feels arms wrap around her middle as she's tackled hard from behind, throwing her face-first into the rolling slope of the valley, overturning rocks and debris as she goes. The body holding her down is heavy and familiar as it tumbles with her in a tornado of limbs and angry curses. The cracking _rat-tat-tat _of gunfire explodes overhead; blasts like firecrackers and close enough to make her ears ring even though her face is smashed into dirt.

'_Umph' _she grunts, disoriented and pissed off. The waterless cloud of dusk that they were racing against has settled into a darkened twilight and she wonders if it was a suicide mission to venture this far from the refuge of the lab to break into an already ransacked old connivance store. They're going through the last reserves of their hoarded supplies and are verging on desperate. The weatherworn black canvas bag that holds the little plumage they've collected rolls to a stop beside them, an innocuous rock in the barren landscape.

There's the huffing of hot breaths on her neck as the weight rolls off her and she's suddenly able to breathe. Peter lies beside her in the thicket of thorns and branches, every tendon stretched tightly over his bones listening for any sign to where the gunfire came from. She's vaguely aware of his presence as she tries to shake off the feeling that she's just been put on high in the dryer.

"Sorry," Peter wheezes; his voice a low gruff whisper beside her. There are more deafening cracks of a firearm discharging somewhere to their left but she isn't sure if it's from the same direction or a reprisal from before, she's so disoriented. Several muted seconds tick by, but if she's being honest with herself she's beyond any proper measurement of time by now.

"Couldn't have just yelled '_duck'?"_ She mutters darkly as she strains to get her forearms under her, ready to hoist up to retrieve the bag and get the hell out of here, but Peter's long fingers fan out between her shoulder blades and pins her to the ground.

"Wait," he orders, and the intensity of his voice freezes her in place. They listen together in silence, the stale air fluttering along the branches in the settling darkness and little else. Irritated, she elbows his arm away; filthy and sore from walking all day with little to show for it. When he doesn't move, she sets to kick him off, but his hand remains anvil heavy on her back. He hears something in the distance, the trees stretching ahead of them coming to life and out of instinct or habit of self preservation, he rolls his weight on top of her, pinning her to the earth and clamps his free hand over her mouth.

Surprised, she reaches up to tear his hand away when she hears it too: the heavy crunch of footsteps making their way along the hedge of their hiding place. She hears Peter suck in his breath and hold it, her fingernails stamp into his wrist. He winces but stays ramrod still against her.

The footsteps echo as they near their position, and she feels the blood drain when she just makes out the darkened figures trailing their way out of the horizon like ghosts. People crouching low and armed with rifles in makeshift fatigues and Olivia and Peter both know who they are and what will happen if they're discovered. They're hunched together like a pair of mismatched logs and she's pretty sure she's drawing blood from Peter's whitened hand with her nails, but she's afraid to shift a muscle. She has to fight the overwhelming urge to stand and get the hell out of plain sight as the small unit of men draw closer, but she knows well enough that if they're discovered at this point they're both dead, and the remaining bullets for her firearm are too precious a commodity to waste. If they were lucky, they'd kill a few and then get shot in the back trying to run away. Their only chance is to sit tight and wait. Two things she was inept at doing well, and he knows it.

She feels Peter's arm flex, the flesh and sinew shaking from their uncomfortable position: him half-covering her with his torso, perched on his elbows and trying desperately not to make any sound that might alert the wandering group to their location. Dread sets low in his abdomen as one member breaks away from the others, aiming his rifle around in their general location and Olivia feels Peter's hand slide down her back to inch to the gun that's holstered uncomfortably on her hip, unlocking the clasp that screams as loud crashing cymbal as its unlatched with a click. They suck in a breath in unison.

The man hears it too, scouring the landscape in a tactical perimeter sweep she recognizes, and he's close enough that she can see that he's young, _really young_ and she'd feel bad for the kid if she weren't so terrified that he'd shoot them dead. Eight months can really change things.

The kid does a few cursory rounds, his features blurred by the darkness and Olivia's almost dizzy from trying to regulate her breathing against the muzzle of Peter's hand plastered against her nose. She's not sure if Peter's wandering arm across her back is his attempt to calm her or he's straining to reach her gun. She knows though if she tries to get an arm out to reach for it herself they're both dead.

Everything stops. Olivia can see the battered boots he wears a mere foot above where they're crumpled in the brush, and she prays the darkness is enough to keep them hidden. Peter dips his chin into the crook of Olivia's neck, grinding his teeth together to keep himself quiet. His chapped lips coupled with his beard are rough as sandpaper against her neck as he lets out a soft, shushing sound as the boots take another step in their direction. The subtle lick of his breath against her skin catches her offguard and she lets out an involuntary shudder; the faintest of sighs slipping from Peter's hand before she could draw it back.

Blood slams at her ears as she realizes with horror her mistake. A sidelong glance at Peter and she can make out the white of his eyes as he look back at her, a mixture of surprise and terror etching his features. He swoops back to the barrel of the gun as the kid cranes his neck to try to make out the slightest of sounds, Olivia's face hot from surging embarrassment.

"Kinsley! Get your ass over here!" A grumble of a voice rings out clear in the night. The boy's head whips back over his shoulder. After giving one last hard look in their direction, he drops his gun and clomps back to catch up with the rest of the group. They watch his darkening figure until it blinks out of existence into the horizon.

They stay huddled together for a few more seconds before they trust to ease a muscle. Peter's ears strain for any sound out of the ordinary, anything that might indicate more danger but hears nothing. He's half-glad for the lack of nighttime wildlife activity but is instantly reminded of its absence. When he's confident the immediate threat has passed, he peels his hand away from Olivia's mouth, rolling off her onto his back, letting out a whistle of relief while letting his muscles relax into the dirt. He's acutely aware his proximity on top of her, breathing in the scent of her hair for so long it's embedded into his lungs and he's glad for the opportunity to put distance between them. He feels his neck prickle, just a little bit. He recovers quickly by retrieving the fallen canvas bag as soon as he's upright.

"Not worth three cans of peach preserves, a box of band aids and some shitty vodka." He mutters to diffuse the awkwardness that's settled between the two of them. She's pulling herself into an upright position; purposely trying to ignore the little slip by inspecting the damage on the palms of her hands. They're raw and scrapped and sting like hell, not that she'd ever say anything about it, but she makes a face that Peter doesn't miss, even in the darkness.

"Give 'em." He says, hoisting the battered bag and slinging it around a shoulder. She pulls them out of reach, close to her body and away from his outstretched hands. Not as an insult to his concern, but more an act of self preservation she'd taken to adapting lately.

Never show weakness.

"Olivia," He continues despite her reluctance, taking a step toward her. It annoys the hell out of him when she does this.

"No," she snaps at him, wiping them on the front of her jeans. The pain intensifies, but she brushes it off. "I'm fine. I don't need any more of your brand of helping." She tries to joke, but she's so rusty that it comes off as taunting, letting the "your" stretch out on her tongue like gum.

Peter gives her his best conman sneer, but elects to give in. She's on edge; she's usually on edge every waking hour, _just like they all were_, but this was different. She'd slipped. He turns away from her and lets her back up into a corner, where she feels safest. That's fine with him.

He turns to start pulling himself out of the ditch, the pack stowed sturdily across his back and he can feel every extra pound of it bear down on his already sore shoulders. He's halfway up, knuckles deep in dry earth before he realizes she isn't following. A quick tilt of the head finds her still in the same place he left her, her hands loosely settled across her chest. She almost looks a little disappointed that he didn't make a bigger deal.

"Coming?" he pants, sweat stinging his eyes. He's tired, bone deep tired from not sleeping more than a few hours a night for weeks when he finally gets exhausted enough to sleep where he sat at the lab in Harvard. He's damned hungry too, and he's not waiting around forever for her to sulk before he dives into the canned peaches.

She looks struck, but recovers quickly before finally clamors to dig herself out too. He can just make out the little huffs of indignation mixed with the effort of climbing up the ditch with little water and no food. She almost makes it up before him, and he waits without offering a hand he knew she'd only slap away for her to pull herself onto solid earth.

Now it's nighttime, the illumination from the moon the only light casting in crisscrosses of direction that explodes in muted purple colors that Walter never could explain since it started nine weeks ago. He thinks it's been nine weeks, but he's stopped looking at a calendar after the third month. Breathing is painful now, a soft watery sound that fills the otherwise quiet night. Olivia's face catches a blade of light where she stands and she's painted in soft lilac that would be beautiful if it didn't already make her look impossibly paler than she already is. Sweat is collecting on her forehead as it's wrinkled from her eyebrows shooting skyward as she waits for him to stop staring and say something.

He's too damned tired to respond, so the silence expands and deepens into the brush, carried along by the slight breeze that's dancing along her shoulders and tickling her hair.

"Ready?" She asks for him, wiping the back of her palms across the sweat, trying to move just to move and to get back to the safety that she doesn't feel in opened space anymore.

"Yeah," he answers, hoisting the pack even though it's already secured.

They spend fifteen minutes trying to find their way in silence back to a path to get back to the main road. When they finally come to leveled ground it's impossibly black, and he's only able to make out that she's near him by the random bursts of curses whenever she trips.

"Fuck!" She spats as she's pushing herself back upright after stumbling over a rock, the palms of her hands plunging into the cracked asphalt as she falls. He's next her in an instant, grabbing an elbow to hoist her back into an upright position before she can fight him off.

"That's just great." She huffs, her hands now stinging with new scratches from her fall. She wipes them on the wool of her coat without much thought until it warps into fire up her wrists that makes her hiss into the darkness.

Peter's rummaging through an outside pocket of the duffle bag he's carrying to withdraw a little black flashlight to inspect the damage. He grabs a wrist before she has a chance to pull away and shines the beam of light on her open hand.

"Just spare me the _I'm fine_ bullshit and let me take a look." He says, daring her to pull her hand out of the steel clamp of his fist. She just rolls her eyes but finally lets him. Relieved, he pulls her palm up closer to his face.

Her palms are raw, slightly bleeding but nothing too deep. They'll need to dip into their medical supplies when they get back to the lab. If they knew which direction that was in.

"I think you're going to lose 'em." He says seriously, shaking her wrist a little to lighten up the already tense air that surrounds them like fog. Even in the dark he can make out her smirk, the times that she smiles make the exhaustion just a little more manageable. He clicks off the light to stow carefully back into his pack and drops her hand. There's nothing that's recognizable where they are, the blight destroying most trees and the buildings are dilapidated from when the government crumbled.

She's almost on the verge of utter panic as they stand motionless out in the open and without the meager protection of the dead trees. She's lost; their running from earlier taking them off path and she knows she can't even begin to know what street they're on without the flashlight that's too dangerous to use. She thinks that the well lit lab containing Astrid and Walter and what's left of her scotch sounds like a welcomed five-star hotel. She waits for Peter to move, hoping he knows where the hell it is they are.

Peter doesn't. And he knows that Olivia isn't much better off either. They've been walking for all he knows in the wrong direction for the last twenty minutes or straight into a waiting refugee camp. He knows what the best option is, but doesn't exactly want to be the one to admit it.

"Can you tell which way is North?" She asks as she cranes to see through the blackness of night and deserted buildings above. She never thought she would miss being able to see the Big Dipper, even if she rarely could see it before in the Boston night.

"Sweetheart, I can't even tell which way is up." Came Peter's clipped reply. She instantly prickles against him, frowning even though she knows he can't see her. He squints ahead of them, purposely ignoring her, trying to get his bearings of where the hell they were. He knows Walter's is probably wearing a hole in the path he must be walking in the linoleum of the basement.

"I think we should find shelter for the night." He finally admits into the darkness, thankful she can't make out his face.

"Out here?" She asks, spreading her arms wide and filling the vast space that surrounds them.

"You have a better idea?" He snaps back, waiting a few moments to see if she did. When the darkness around him stays bitterly quiet, he continues.

"I think there was a better part of an old hotel a few miles back. We can head back out in the morning." He isn't sure if he could actually get them back to it, but it seemed like a better plan than wandering out in the open night.

He takes off, hands shoved hard into the pockets of his coat and a faint hope she'd follow. After a few short moments, he catches the crackling of her footfall and is immensly relieved.

Maybe tonight won't be terrible, he thinks as they march into darkness.


	2. The Bed and Breakfast

A/N: total crackfic. I've been really into _Walking Dead_ lately so things may get dark. All feedback Welcomed.

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><p>They take refuge in the old abandoned Bed and Breakfast that's long since left for dead. It smells like an unpleasant mixture of rot and mold, and they hide out together in the smallest room upstairs, protected behind a makeshift barrier made up of the room's rustic furniture dragged in front of the door.<p>

"It's sad that people used to actually come here… happy people." She muses as she slumps against the wall, taking in the once bright room. She lets her legs kick out in front of her, facing the door the furniture is blocking, wishing she wasn't sitting on the floor. She feels uncomfortable in places that are a remembrance of happiness. Peter's makes himself busy in the bathroom, playing with the facets to see if anything works. There's a long whining noise that's escapes the pipes as he twists the taps, carrying the noise into the bedroom, but no water appears.

Just perfect.

"I don't know about you, but I've never been the 'Bed and Breakfast' type of guy before, so this is a first for me too." He says as he gives up on the comfort of a shower to crumple next to her against the wall. She gives him a worn smile: _he really isn't the type of guy. _

He digs through the contents of the bag to withdraw the can of peaches and the handle of vodka, perching both on his lap as she looks on with curiosity.

"What are you doing?" She asks incredulously as he starts to peel back the pin to the tin.

"What? Big bad FBI agent afraid of a little botchulism?" He ribs as he sniffs the contents, the homey aroma of sugar wafting and his stomach grumbles in response.

"We're supposed to be bringing that back for everyone." She says indignantly, but leaning toward him all the same. It's been forever since she's had peaches.

Peter dips two fingers into the sticky syrup to pinch a slice. "You think one can of peaches is going to split equally between the four of us?" He reasons, letting the syrup dribble down his wrist a little before running his tongue over it, savoring.

"Besides, you know Walter would only hog it all himself and then where would we be?"

He twists his wrists the other way to catch the path of the syrup but stops when he realizes that she's eyeing him in a way she hasn't before: eyes tracing the features of his hand, chewing absentmindedly on her lips. She snaps her head away from him when she realizes what she's doing. He smiles internally as he drops the slice into his mouth, smacking his lips together greedily and wiping his fingers clean.

"Spoils of war." He mouths through peach remnants and hands the can over to her.

She gives him a hard look before accepting, studying the can for a moment, weighing options before she takes one herself.

"Just eat it already." She hears Peter grumble beside her. So she does.

The taste is inexplicably a warm memory; reminding her of happier and simpler times as sugar fills in the crater of constant hunger. She dips in again to pull another piece out as Peter unscrews the vodka to pull in a gulp. When she goes for a third Peter has to wrestle the can away before she goes through the entire contents before he can wiggle himself out another slice.

"What happened to 'that's for everyone' mentality?" he scoots away, trying to shield the rest from her nimble fingers. "Sharing is caring!" He throws in when he slaps the peach slice out of her hand to fall back into the can with a small plunk.

She's laughing as he elbows her away, trying not to spill the can or vodka as she goes for the peaches again, her chipmunk cheeks full of plunder. He can't help but let her shift in mood flood him, a smile breaking as she reaches across him to his outstretched hand.

"Spoils of war!" She reminds him through chuckles, making another drive for the can. He's already off-balanced when she knocks him sideways, pulling the can just out of her reach, his back hitting the scraped hardwood as she attempts to crawl over him. She'd smother him gratefully if it meant she got her hands on the rest of the goddamned peaches.

His laughter is almost foreign in the stale air, rich and vibrant to her ears. He hadn't laughed since the portal had been ripped open and the first wave arrived and she was suddenly starved to hear it again as she was for the food.

"I will use my gun." she grates threateningly when he tries to kick himself away from her. His arm is stretched high over his head, protecting his treasure, his other hand wielding the vodka like a shield as she wiggles onto his lap to pin him to the floor. She bats away the empty threat of the vodka he's trying to sacrifice and it clatters on the floor.

She pinches her knees on either side of his hips, pinning one arm above his head and the other against his chest, planting her body weight on his trying to immobilize him to realize he's already stopped resisting.

She's a little light headed when her brain finally catching up to their actions. Peter's on his back, arm still outstretched over his head with the other one pinned between their squished together chests and her knees locked on either side of his lap. His face is wiped clean of all the humor from before and his eyes look black as coal as she could feel his hips stiffen in a very tale-tell way against her lap.

She realizes she has two choices at this point: She could take the peaches, eat them and ignore their present situation like she hadn't just straddled him. Or, and this one much more tempting, was to scoot off him, shoot through the window with her gun and scale down the side to make a run for it through the woods and take her chances with the resisters.

She doesn't have to decide when he interrupts her when he sits up so abruptly he almost throws her off him in the process. He grabs her forearm before she tumbles backward and hands her the mostly still preserved preservatives.

"You win, sweetheart." He says huskily, letting her palm what's left of the can, but she can't seem to move her legs to get off him. He's unbelievably charged; the thrill of victory settling low in his abdomen and a slow chill starts raking up his back.

"You gonna let me up or should I tap out?" He jokes, but his voice is too low for him to say it convincingly. This seems to snap her back to present time and she's off him so quickly that he almost feels the whoosh of air being displaced. She backs up to the wall again, her face bright pink and he has to think to himself that maybe coming out to the woods wasn't such a bad idea after all.

He settles in next to her, keeping his distance beside her and she tries to ignore the way he shifts awkwardly as she finishes what's left of the peaches.

Words aren't spoken between them as they settle in and fall asleep to wait out the remainder of the night.

She's awoken when the floor trembling violently beneath them. Peter's eyes snap open and his neck's sore from lying awkwardly against the wall and a splitting headache when he's finally able to shake himself fully awake. He realizes as Olivia's shoving off his chest with a push that she must having fallen asleep against him sometime in the last few hours. He catalogues it away for later because he can't linger when she's scrambling for her gun that's abandoned on the floor.

She's on her feet facing their barricade as he's throwing open the curtains to the window facing west. It's not yet morning, but close, the sun peeks out behind what's left of the skylight enough for him to feel the terror snake through his guts as he catches a glimpse of ragged clothing and battered rifles crashing down the streets like bulls.

"Shit!" He shouts, but his voice is lost as the walls groan from another blast that explodes too close to their location. He watches in horror as an older guy in fatigues disappears into fire and dust, splattering pieces like confetti on the others that were unfortunate enough to be standing close to the landmine. There's a split second that Peter realizes how ridiculously close they'd been to that exact spot last night, but his ears pop from another explosion and he can't see; the glass to the window shattering and spilling down in either direction as the walls fight to remain upright. He's thrown backward from another blast and reaches out a blind hand to steady him and takes a fist full a glass for his effort.

Olivia's standing like a football player in front of the door, gun aimed the wall as it quakes around them. Her teeth crack together and the furniture dances but she stays upright through the blast.

"Which is it?" She shouts, all business and not daring to look away from the door.

Peter's shakes the glass loose from his hand and is busy cursing under his breath. He elbows the curtains back in time to lock eyes with the slow rolling pickup that's got a group of men seated in the cab.

There's the ricochet echo of peppering gunshot shells into the windshield and Peter ducks away from the window when one of the men fires blindly into surrounding buildings.

"It's us!" He shouts back and she feels the blood surging in her chest, carrying just enough adrenalin to starve off the panic she wants to keep smothered. She turns to face him but he's right behind her, grabbing her jacket to drop her to the floorboards with him as the autumn walls splinter above with a spray of bullets.

She lands with a thump, her already battered knees bruising as she collides painfully with the floorboards, the gun ricocheting off the floor and out of her grasp.

"They're coming!" He shouts into her ear, grasping at her collar and dragging her upright. Peter's a flash flood of black dread at this point, watching the pickup roll to a stop and the cab empty of passengers as the men rush into the first floor of their building, only having enough time to grab her before one of them aims his machine gun into the second floor.

She's pushing him off, trying to make a play for the gun that's now scattered to the opposite side of the room. The ground shakes around them and he can feel the floor shift, losing a support beam someplace.

"This place can't take much more abuse; we gotta get out of here." He shouts above the crumbling ruins, pulling her upright with him.

"The gun-" She shouts, feeling useless and naked without it, but the floorboards shake at each thud of footfall on the stairs. Peter's drags her by the crook of her elbow to the direction of the bathroom. He grabs the canvas bag and stuffs it into her arms as they pass.

"Leave it." He clips, deliberately leaving off that it wouldn't do them much good anyway as he slams the bathroom door shut behind them and pushes her into the claw foot porcelain tub and climbing in after her.

There's an explosion of gunfire overhead, forcing them into a crouching position that makes her knees scream in protest and his head pound like a drum line. The bag is stuffed somewhere between knees and porcelain, making the already small bath indefeasibly smaller. It's not long before her legs shake from the effort of their mutual crouching.

For a few long stretching seconds everything's calm. Peter's haggard breath is hot in her ear, filling the small space inside the tub and she's pressed almost painfully against the faucet as they pray that their little barrier will hold.

"Maybe they left." He offers quietly, feeling her quickened breath on the side of his face. They both know it's not true.

As if in answer there's an echoing thud of pounding from the other side of the door. There's a crashing noise from next door as it's being kicked in off its hinges.

"Fuck," Peter mutters, frantically looking for something that might protect them. "See anything useful?" His voice is barely below hysterics.

"Well, we used to have a gun." She retorts dry as desert. There's a cracking noise from the other room as the men outside start to ram against the restraint of their hiding place. She feels the crippling tear of wanting to stay put versus the instinctive nature of wanting to fight tooth and nail against them.

"There's a window," Peter points his head behind them, "We're probably close enough to the ground to make the jump." He grinds, trying to make himself believe that they could actually make the two-story leap.

"And if they're outside?" She retorts, already crawling out of the tub, trying to regain feeling in her extremities.

"You wanna go out the front door?" He shouts back, the walls crumbling around them, swirling dust up in little mushroom clouds around them. She's covered in the chalky color, coating her hair and sticking to her clothing. There's another thundering crush and he knows it won't be long before they're through it all together. He picks up the faint echo of voices outside, yelling angrily to one another.

She doesn't respond, reaching down beneath the sink to the exposed pipe below it, gripping it hard and tearing it away with a foot planted on the wall beside it. It breaks away easily, a good foot and a half in height and hefty enough that it could do some major damage.

She weighs it in her hand, watching Peter's impressed expression. Peter's back to work in an instant, tearing the soiled, torn shower curtain straight from the rod, popping little plastic clips as he goes. She watches the door with her new toy as he wraps the curtain around his hand and arm, giving himself a nice little boxing glove. She looks at him quizzically until he puts his finger to his lips, shushing her: listening.

When there's another exploding crash of sound, he propels all his weight up through his arm and through the glass of the window, breaking it and sprinkling it in all directions. He breaks enough of it away to peer down over the side. There's broken cement and concrete jutting up around the outside, a thick brush of almost dead bushes right below them but currently void of psychos with handguns. It'all hurt like hell, but it's still better than the alternative.

"Let's go!" he shouts at her, already tossing the duffle outside and watching it land with a thud at the bottom.

"You can't be serious!" She looks white, but the deafening collusion on the other side of the bathroom tells him they've made it through the barrier and they were out of time for discussion.

"C'mon," He grabs her and hooks his hands under hers, helping her swing her legs carefully over the window pane.

"On three." He whispers as soft as thunder beside her as he ignores each footfall sweep across the room. He's sick to his stomach knowing they're outside the door.

"Bad idea." She braces against the window pane, trying not to look over the edge.

"Remember the time you jumped off the roof of a building to a fire escape to chase down a subject?" He asks, trying not to drop her as she leans her weight into his chest.

"Yeah," she says, relaxing just a bit in his arms.

"Good."

There's the crack of firearms from somewhere in the distance, matching in tempo with the clattering of clomping boots around them. He almost stumbles as the floor rocks again, grabbing onto her and steadying himself.

"Three!" He pushes. She clears the window and disappears from sight. She lands hard on her feet and staggers, but is quickly upright again, looking back at him thoroughly pissed and expectant.

He's got one foot over the side himself before the door's kicked open and he hears the commotion rather than sees it—feels the gust of air whoosh in as they push into the room, hears the cloud of angry sounds being shouted in his direction and the sudden shift as another beam gives away below them and the room gives, splitting open and the men and thrown sideways as the floor opens its mouth and swallows. There's the clattering of wild gunfire before Peter wraps his arms around his head, says a quiet prayer to anyone who might be listening, leans and out the window and jumps.


	3. Shifting Garbage

A/N: I wanted to get this up before Halloween, but I'm a few hours late. So, happy belated Halloween! A hard T rating for now, but it will probably bump up to an 'M' shortly. All feedback welcomed.

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><p>There's an empty, fleeting feeling of freefall as he dives out the window of the crumbling building, letting the air ripple the fabric of his shirt from under his jacket as he goes. He's barely able to breathe before he's face first into the starchy thicket directly below with a crunch, hoping against hope as he goes that the building won't come down on top of him.<p>

She watched in horror as the building shuddered and crumbled, Peter flying out the window and lifelessly landing at her feet, obscured by the brown of the dead bushes. The pops of gunfire brightens the inside window as he leaps, flaying to get his feet under him without success. The walls corrode from the outside in, erupting into a giant mushroom cloud of debris as it crashes.

She drops on top of him, shielding her head with her arms with him tucked neatly under her weight; her eyes squeezed shut waiting for the last piece of drywall to crumble to a stop.

"Jesus, Peter!" She says as she lifts off him, rummaging over his back and sides before turning him over to face her to see if he's hit. He's out cold, eyes shut and a nasty gash in his forehead, but she doesn't see a gunshot wound. _A little good news, at least_. But she knows it won't be long before the others notice that the whole building has collapsed.

She slaps him on either cheek, ignoring the irritated groans he gives in protest.

"C'mon Sunshine," she hushes urgently, pulling him upright. She's about ready to start dragging his dead weight when one eye opens just a sliver, the rest of his face scrunching up as he reaches for the gash in his forehead as he's thrown painfully back into reality.

"Did you save the peaches?" He asks gruffly as he pulls his hand away to inspect his reddened fingers.

She lets out a hoarse sigh of relief, pulling him up into a standing position and keeping a firm grip around his torso as he staggers upright. She's got the bag slung behind her back and Peter's weight around her shoulders as they stumble away from the wreckage. It's like she's carrying a god-damned piano as they make their way toward the back of the landscape, her knees shaking from supporting most of his weight as he tries to claw back fully awake.

"What happened to _one_ and _two_?" She asks, readjusting his arm over her shoulders with a huff. He lets out a hissing chuckle, trying to put coherent words together.

"I'm the one who did the face-plant from the two story window, you're lucky you got _three._" He says tersely, the early dusty morning too bright to his eyes. They sidestep over what's left of an unfortunate soul who wasn't so lucky. Facedown and grey, one arm stretched out like he'd been crawling away from something when he died.

Peter feels the wave of nausea choke him.

"Don't look at it; won't help." He says sidelong to her, a little more focused now as they pass the corpse. She's a little perturbed that he's been adapting "it" as a placeholder for people they find along the sides of the streets. She's almost gotten used to witnessing the carnage, to those stuck between the fighting and the casualties of the war they didn't start. But it doesn't make it any easier to stomach.

"Yup." Is all she gives.

It's daylight now, the sky a fiery haze of gold as they fight their way through the underbrush of overgrown surroundings, the snaking branches winding themselves into abandoned vehicles and sidewalks. They avoid the main roads, the pickup too close a call of resisters and more that could be trolling the streets looking with means and opportunity.

"We've gotta stop." Peter finally wheezes when they get a few blocks down, his lungs on fire and head pounding as Olivia drags him into an alley between an old coffee shop and dry cleaners, dropping him on the concrete separating the two buildings. He leans against the crumbling brickwork of the building, massaging the tense muscles of his neck trying to abate the headache of Superman-ing his way out of the collapsing building. She cozies between a row of old dumpsters, trash filling up the stout squares, spilling over the sides and onto the street.

"How's your head?" She asks as she crouches down, feeling her knees crack and leading her to wonder when it was that she'd gotten so old. The bleeding on his forehead had mostly stopped by now, leaving a crusty coat over Peter's left eye. She shifts through the canvas bag, pulling out what's left of their meager medical supplies.

"It's fine." He replies, suddenly remembering the gash and rubbing his fingers across it. The blood oozes through the dried layer and he winces.

"Wanna just drop the whole _I'm fine _bit and let me clean it up before you attract a Shifter?" She mocks his earlier words, already pulling out a butterfly band aid and some gauze. He shoots her a nasty glare, but drops his hand and let's her look at him without a fight. She settles between his outstretched legs wiping the blood rather than dabbing, which stings like hell, so he knows that she's still a little pissed about being tossed out the window.

"Is it a good day or a bad one when the least of our problems are zombies?" He asks and she makes a face as she tosses the bloodied bandage into the overflow of garbage, watching it flutter to a landing as delicately as a butterfly. She refuses them call them _zombies_. They're NOT zombies.

"I wouldn't say that they're the least of our problems." She muses, pinching the band aide in place over the gash. The morning light has settled through the dense fog that coats everything in dust, but she can see his face better in the open light than under the generator-powered halogen of the lab. Maybe she's never bothered to look before. He's lost a lot of weight. The boyish fullness of his face that she remembers when they first met is gone, now replaced with the sharp contours of cheekbones now partially obscured by ungodly stubble. His hair curls up at the ends, under his ears and atop his forehead and she has to resist the urge to ruffle her fingers through it.

She wonders how he must see her.

There's shuffling inside the mess of the dumpster beside them, the sound of shifting bags and wet muffled breathing and they're both on their feet. The sound is easy to recognize, and the panic spikes in her chest as they stumble away from the movement, almost forgetting to grab the bag as they flee. Olivia reaches out to Peter, still a little woozy on his feet, and they're half-crouching half-running to the other side of the next dumpster. There's a body poking up through the coverage of the garbage beside them, skinned almost to the bone looking skyward if it still had eyes. Olivia has to plug her nose to keep from retching, the smell of soiled trash and death filling the space like thick incense.

They're crowd against the furthest corner away from the body, backed against the brick and Peter can see a sliver of the moving dumpster from their hiding place. The contents from inside the bin bubbles up and over onto the street, contents spewing everywhere as a mangled hand reaches out from the center of the debris.

Peter feels the contents of his stomach shift as the hand makes room for the rest of the decrepit body as it pulls itself from the dumpster. It's terrifying and grotesque; the shell wearing a women's skin, pieces peeling away to reveal the bright white of bone that Peter can make out even from the distance. Olivia's huddled beside him, her breathing hitching as she strains to see over him through the sliver of space separating the dumpster from the building.

It's hard to see if the thing was once a shape shifter or human: the blackened teeth obscured by the little skin left on its body, a little fluttering of hair dusting the landscape of skull that's not sunken in. It moves without grace: awkward, jerking movements reaching over the side and falling sharply onto the pavement, a snapping noise overpowering the wet shallow groans whenever it tries to breathe.

"What were you saying about the least of our problems?" Olivia whispers, grasping the pipe between two coiled fists. She's trying to blend into the wall, to make herself invisible as the shifter pushes itself upright.

"I may have spoken too soon." He says, feeling the surge of fear low in his stomach, ready to propel him into action and feeling absolute regret in having left the gun behind.

"It only would have called the others to us." She answers his unspoken thoughts, propping herself higher against the wall, readying. She won't admit it to him, but she would have traded the bag and the peaches for her gun a hundred times over right now.

The crumpled figure's upright, the rattling noise like a creaking door that makes the hair on Peter's neck stand on end. It's hunched so far over that Peter wonders how it stays upright, shuffling along and craning its neck blindly trying the sort out their location.

"Suggestions?" Peter grinds, his knee's shaking so quickly in anticipation that it's starting to crunch the bags they're hiding in. Olivia reaches out, planting a firm hand on his thigh to silence him. He snaps his head away from the momentary danger, looking at her sharply and parting his lips like he wants to say something. The heaviness of her hand on the denim makes his stomach dip in a way that replaces the terror he should be feeling. Everything grinds to a stop in his brain, and he suddenly has the urge to grab her hand and move it somewhere else.

He snaps himself out of it.

She's already withdrawn her hand, crunching it against the sleeve of his jacket, threading her fingers deep in the fibers and he realizes that she hasn't been looking at him at all. She's unfocused, looking over the scope of his head, down slopes of the alley.

He shakes off the wave of heat to look back toward the danger, seeing nothing but the alley. He cranes his neck higher, feeling a fresh to wave of terrified again.

"I lost it." Olivia mumbles into his neck, pushing off his shoulder and sliding along the dumpster wall to peek over the side. Peter opens his mouth to stop her, to call her back but nothing leaves his lips. It takes one second, one second for Peter to hear the noise, to register it and know exactly what it means.

Olivia, however, isn't so lucky.

The shape shifter pops into view, filling her vision and blotting out the sun behind it. Arms outstretched and teeth bared angrily; the gurgling turning into a steady stream of hungry hissing. Its boney fingers claw into Olivia and she yelps; stumbling backward, the pipe clatters into the mass debris as she falls. She sees everything in acute clarity, feeling the same exact unabashed fear she remembers when she was six and fell down the stairs: the absolute understanding as she went barreling face first into the first stair that things were going to be bad.

She vaguely hears Peter call her name, launching forward to wrench her arm out of the iron grasp of the decaying arms that are trying to grab a hold of her. The harsh, haunting smell of death is overpowering as it tries to snake its mouth down to her neck. Peter yanks her backward, scrambling out of the path of the shape shifter as it turns the corner facing them.

"HEY!" shouts a voice from the end of the alley. The corpse jerks back upright, its head twitching toward the voice that called it. Olivia and Peter are smashed against the wall, buried deep under kicked over trash bags and soiled bodies. Olivia's scouring the trash in a mad fit, trying desperately to find the pipe before she realizes the shape shifter has turned away.

They sit huddled together, hearts sputtering and blood pressure spiking until Olivia finally finds the pipe with shaky hands to hold it tight against her chest. Once the things out of sight, Peter turns on her, planting his legs on either side of her lap, pinning her, and prying her hands away from her chest and tearing open her jacket.

"What are you doing?" She asks indignantly, her voice a few octaves higher than she'd like. Peter's brow is furrowed, snaking his fingers across the skin of her neck. Her neck stings as he runs his fingers over a tender area where her shoulder curves. He shifts her forward to inspect the pain closer before abandoning it to move on.

"Were you bitten?" He snarls, terrified, pulling up the sleeves to her jacket. She's so confused that she can't think of an answer. She pulls her arms away from his grasp, her back hitting the wall.

"What?" She asks, confused.

Peter's got her face clasp between his palms, raking a heated look over the details that he could see. She's trapped under his furious gaze.

"Did it bite you?" He nearly shouts an inch away.

"Of course not!" She snaps, pushing away his hands and pulling her jacket tight around her neck. Peter seems momentarily relieved, jumping off her and swinging back around and looking back down the alley. She stares at his back, hot, angry tears stinging her eyes.

"Shit." He whispers, and she's scrambling to catch up to peer over the side with him.

The shape shifter's shuffling back down the length of the alley, a broken doll reanimated. Peter and Olivia both can see the resister, turning from cocky to ashen faced and a little green. From the look of his trembling gun, he was new.

"No…" Peter cautions to the man who can't hear him, "no, no, no." The corpse picks up speed, moving faster on its bent leg than it should be able to, as the guy in fatigues goes absolutely white as he raises his gun to take aim. Olivia's on her feet, _ever the cop,_ already to bolt toward the danger.

"Are you crazy?" Peter grabs onto her coat to drag her to the ground beside him. She falls with a thump, struggling against his restraining arms before the pop of gunfire explodes into the daylight. They watch in horror as the man fires wildly at the corpse, hitting it a few times before it dives into him.

There's a terrible, wild scream that cuts off abruptly as the shape shifter head bows and sinks into his neck. Peter grabs a hold of Olivia and they're running with every fiber of their being. It didn't matter that they're in plain sight right now. It didn't matter that a guy that had inadvertently saved Olivia's life was getting torn to shreds a mere 20 feet away from where they stood.

The only thing mattered that they got the hell out of this nightmare and back to the lab.


	4. The bookstore

A/N: Sorry for the delay, I've got the next chapter that will be up ASAP to make up for my lazy updating. We're starting to head into M territory soon, so beware. I'll label it for safety. Enjoy!

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><p>They've traveled the distance of sixteen city blocks before Peter has to screetch to a halt, pushing Olivia away so he can throw up in a dented trashcan that sits abandoned outside an old bookstore so it avoids splattering over her.<p>

"You okay?" Olivia asks between sucking the air in gratefully, trying to give him some room to finish emptying his stomach. Peter heaves a few more times before he's able to pull himself upright. His throat burns and he's seeing little pops of color from the pounding migraine that's increasingly worsened around the fourth overturned street sign they passed without slowing down.

"Yeah," he huffs as another dry heave racks his chest, "Just give me a second." He tries to focus on the decapitated doll head in the trash that he hasn't sprayed as a focus point to keep him grounded. After a few more false-starts, he's able to stretch and wobble away from the stench of his own vomit.

"Sorry," he tells her, wiping his mouth ruefully with the back of his hand as he pads over to where she's standing guard. She's looking past him toward the shop: windows bashed out and the insides darkened. She gives him a little quirk of the mouth, brushing off his apology.

"You think there's anything left in there?" She juts her chin toward the building. Peter turns back to squint an eye at it, considering.

"You in the mood for some light reading?" He says tersely, but instantly regretting the harshness of his words.

"You really want to go through that again?" He settles on, thinking back to the too close a call and feeling the shiver at the thing that tried to dig into Olivia. He stuffs his hands into his coat pockets, trying to casually scope out the extent to the injury to her neck. He's half-dreading that her eyes will roll back and she'll transform in front of his eyes.

"It's not that bad." She says stubbornly, his innocent look not unnoticed.

"We should let Walter look at it." He says evenly, already taking a step in her direction.

"I wasn't bitten." She challenges, and he knows that, _of course he knows that. _She'd already be gone by now. The idea unsettles him, a bone deep fear that he doesn't want to have to come to terms with.

"You probably have to get a Tetnus shot." Peter jokes lightly. Olivia buttons the collar straight up, covering the evidence with an irritated face, already heading to the direction of the building without meeting his eyes. He lets a sigh ripple through his chest before following.

Her step is tinged with an edge he hasn't seen in a long time, not since the first time he laid eyes on her in Iraq. Her stride is purposeful, strong and a slight bounce in the curl of her hips. It's exactly as he remembers it, he remembers with a flush.

The book store is in far better condition than either could have thought from the outside: the heavy frames of the bookshelves large and mostly upright, magazines and abandoned books covering the small space of the floor like a rug. There's an old stone fireplace against the side of the room, mostly covered in winding spider webs with two overthrown leather chairs on their sides in front of it like the furniture forts Peter used to make when he was a kid. They spread out, on high alert; Olivia leading with the lead pipe toward the back as Peter waits upfront to keep watch.

He looks out one of the shattered windows into the vacant streets, taking in the vastness of destruction that surrounds them. It isn't that surprising that the store withstood the majority of rampage, literature wasn't exactly a commodity in war. He almost half expects tumbleweeds to bounce along the street like in the old Western movies.

"Hey, come take a look at this." Olivia calls out to him, her voice excited.

Peter makes his way past the counter that holds the already gutted register, finding her lingering in front of a closed door.

"What is it?" Peter asks, watching as she kneels down to peep through the key hole. It's old fashioned, brass handle and she rummages through her pocket for her key pick as she replies casually, "That's what we're going to find out."

She hands him the pipe as she makes work on the lock, craning the pick one direction, then the other before she hears the click. Peter watches on, impressed.

_She'd make a good crook_, he thinks with a half-amused smile.

The door creaks open as it swings inward, revealing what hides behind the oak door.

Both Peter and Olivia share the exact same looks of confusion. It's a janitor's closet. Stacks of old toilet paper and random cleaning supplies lean against the shelves.

"Why would this be locked?" Peter asks the question they're both thinking.

What they were hoping to be a locked cellar hiding medical supplies or canned food. Olivia squeezes in feeling along the shelves, hoping to find _something_ useful. Her fingers skim across the back wall and she stops. The wood feels wrong; her fingers bending the giving wood. She pushes, and the whole back wall turns. She takes an alarmed step into Peter, who catches her by the arms.

"That was…unexpected." Peter notes in her hair.

There's a small stack of stairs leading downward, they take them cautiously until they're met with another closed door, Olivia taking the handle and swinging the door open.

It turns out to be a small, renovated bunker; probably once an old servants' quarters and obviously being well maintained by the looks of it. There's not much space but well used, a small cot with tucked bedding; a small modest dresser and the same leather chair in the corner that shines warmly against the wooden paneling of the room, an armful of books stacked neatly in the middle of the cushion. There's a smaller version of the grand fireplace that Peter saw in the main room, charred logs and ash telling him that this place hasn't been abandoned for long.

Olivia's explores the room as Peter hangs back; not trusting the idea of wanting to disturb anything, feeling like they've wandered into someone's hideout.

"Look at this," She calls, fingering through the hard spines of the books sitting on the chair as she passes; "Someone was living here."

Olivia casually moves around the room, fascinated that anything that survived the Great Fall to be remarkable. The books are thick and leather-bound. They're obviously well loved.

"I don't think we should be here." Peter says, letting himself in and closing the door behind him. He's exhausted, hungry and just a little on edge from the events of the day. He doesn't find the route interest that Olivia has in the room. He's not primed to find out who is habituating this place or what they'd do to keep it secret.

"What if it's another survivor?" She asks, tracing her fingers around the small knob of a door she's found. She's a single, fine point of electricity. She's exhilarated; there could be more who's survived that isn't undead or Resisters.

"We haven't had much luck with those." Peter retorts sarcastically, crossing his arms across his chest as he tries to keep the trickle of uneasiness under wraps. He really would rather be at the lab. Even Walter would be a welcomed sight.

She shoots him a look before twisting the handle to the door, feeling a rush of excitement as the room opens up before her. It's small bathroom with an attached shower and a toilet. There are towels folded neatly on a rack below the sink and she's suddenly deliriously happy. He watches her disappear into the room without moving from his spot at the threshold.

"What is it?" Peter asks curiously as he follows her in. She's got the glass door opened, the hot water tap turned on and the shower head springs to life, filling the room with the heat from the water. The lead pipe tings against the linoleum as it slips from his fingers.

"You've gotta be kidding me," Peter mumbles under his breath, crowding his way in to feel the steam against his skin. Her smile is miles wide, letting the hot water collect in her palms and spill over the sides. She doesn't care that it's soaking through her jacket because she's got her whole arm in the space of the shower stall. It feels better than amazing. It feels for the first time like hope.

She feels Peter crowed in behind her, crowding the space and she can feel his excitement radiating from his chest onto her back. The steam on his face is soft but aggressive, warm licks of heat raking down his neck and flooding his chest. He mirrors her, touching the steady stream of water and letting it prove it's real.

"This is…" he starts, not really sure what he wants to say to a shower. He feels her grin beside him, her fingers blocking most of the downpour of water over his.

"Yeah. Dibs." She says, and he can't help but laugh.


	5. Oliva Naked In the Bathroom

A/N: As promised :)

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><p>Olivia's skin is itchy.<p>

Pelting herself with hot water felt like an affirmation of her being alive, and it felt damned good. Months of flat anger at the exponentially dissolving world and little she could do to stop it made the muscles in her shoulder constrict so violently that it was painful to feel the heat ease the tension so she could breathe finally.

Now, standing naked in the old bathroom of a bomb shelter, wrapped in some oversized towel is not how she thought hers and Peter's little expedition would go. Their mission had been simple enough: find food, bring it back, hunker down and ride out the rest of the Apocalypse until Walter finds a cure.

Or die.

She strains to look at her reflection in the steel placement of a mirror, twisting her neck to check to see the extent of how gnawed on she is, finding little but subtle bruising and a few scrapes. She's lucky.

She's jittery, a rumbling excitement low in her stomach like she's dumped a gallon of coffee even though they've been out of stock for over a month. No, _something just feels off_, but not necessarily in a bad way.

Actually, it's the warm flush of having almost died, being tossed out of a collapsing house and getting gummed on by some defected shiftshaper and _not dying_ makes her adrenalin pump pleasantly through her veins and makes her feel…just so alive. More alive than she's felt in months.

She even looks different: hair slicked back and flowing longer down her back than she'd ever remember it being, a big difference than the tight, no-nonsense braid she's been uniformed. She almost looks _good_ she thinks.

The humidity from the shower is an unsettling warmth; having to endure months of cold sprays in the decontaminating shower at the lab when the Peter-rigged generator is too precious to fire up to heat the water. She realizes with disgust at the time span since the last time she'd taken a proper shower.

And it was nowhere short of amazing, not even being able to bring herself to turn off the taps just so she could stand in the warmth for a few more moments as she dried off. She knows Peter's just outside, scrounging through the small bunker, waiting his turn as impatiently as she would be.

She feels her stomach warm as she thought back to the moment in the woods: the subtle scratch of his stubbled cheeks, the heat of his breath against her neck; being completely closed off with the weight of him. It felt normal. It felt good, _he felt good_.

It felt fucking alarming.

She lets herself concentrate on things she normally wouldn't let herself focus on, out of mutual respect of their current arrangement, living and depending on him for survival; having to work together to care for Walter as he attempts to come up with a solution to the shit-scape they've been subjected.

Olivia wanders freely to Peter, the way his long fingers can wrap almost wholly around her wrist when he drags her back on course when she's off balanced. She feels a little iniquitous, a thrill of being daring wondering what else he could do with his clever fingers.

There's a new sort of coiled tension in her shoulders, rolling off in thick waves and her skin prickles where her wet hair pebbles down her back, a tickling roll into the fibers, making her shiver. She leaves her clothes hanging in their place behind the door, telling herself that it's Peter's turn; he'd be a pissed if she uses all the hot water before he gets his chance. Really, she just needs another affirmation of her survival.

She lets herself out of the bathroom, the steam billowing out behind her and filling the small room with fog and she finds him instantly in the high back of the leather chair facing away from her. He's engrossed in something, the hair on his head tilted downward and she wonders if he fell asleep.

There's an uneasy prickle of reality overriding the hot burn and she almost chickens out.

But the tension is unbearable, a staircase of wicked ambition; and suddenly it's vital for her to touchdown, to grab onto something stable and let her know she's still here. She pads around him silently, finding him thumbing through a book but she's not really interested, watching his forearms curl as he cradles it, those same long finger running down the brittle looking pages. There's the flush creeping up her chest that she's far too familiar with and she feels pretty bold.

"Hey." She says, wrapping the towel more securely around her.

He opens his mouth to respond and then closes just as abruptly as his looks up at her from under his eyelashes; all air seeming to vacate his lungs. He stares, uncharacteristically blank and glassy eyed, and shifting his gaze from her smirking face to the towel in which she's secured. He doesn't register what the hell is going on so he just sits there; precariously waiting for her to conclude whatever it was.

"Good book?" She asks him nonchalantly enough for one person who's standing (somewhat) naked in front of another person. Her face gives nothing away and that terrifies him.

"Uh," he tries, completely forgetting what it is that he's reading. It lays opened to the same page on top of his lap. "I don't know." He answers her honestly enough.

She makes that goddamned face that he recognizes and he's caught fire.

"Good." She says simply before she tugs the book from his opened hands. Her fingers touch his and the skin there erupts into the same smoldering heat as well. She's leaning low and he's damned still, paralyzed, as she carefully places the book next to him on the small table.

"Olivia." His tongue is thick as custard, leaning back so she can climb onto his lap. She's pink from the shower, heat radiating and throwing BTU's into the parts of her he's touching. His hands are flat on the armrests, digging his nails into the leather. He swallows. Her hands are sitting softly on his shoulders, steadying herself, or holding him down _he's not sure_, as she straddles his hips. Steam is filling the space and the contact makes him break out into one taut, aching shiver. He should be pissed she left the water on, wasting whatever hot water there could be left. But he's not.

It blankets everything in a hazy, dreamlike quality. Rolling in thick waves and smothering warm, humid air in his lungs as he attempts to breathe. He should be concerned that whoever's bunker they're taking advantage of could come back, could be hostile, but he can't really seem to be bothered by that fact, either.

"Peter?" She whispers into his ear, shifting just an inch in the right direction and all thoughts are lost, instead he digs his fingers into the flesh of her back, pulling her closer. He makes a hissing sound that sounds like a response to her question.

"Just shut up." She warns right before she drops her face to his, taking advantage of his momentarily silence with her mouth.


	6. Steam

A/N: So insomnia + too much coffee = poor attention span and the constant reevaluation and editing of other fics (Fringe related and other). So I apologize for the infinite amount of time between chapters. A million thanks to my own personal Walter Bishop who provided the science that's so Fringy that it gives me both the heebies and the jeebies.

All feedback welcomed.

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><p>If there's one thing that's essential in a pseudo-zombie apocalypse, it's the ability to rein in emotions; otherwise, they become liabilities. They'll get you killed. Olivia learned this early on, ever since she emptied a clip into the first with the child's face in the courtyard outside Harvard long ago, she knew—if you get attached, if you hesitate for even a second, you're dead. Or worse.<p>

From that first time she's learned to keep her hands constantly fisted, white knuckled and always ready.

Right now they're curled in the fibers of Peter's hair so tightly he's sure she'd pull them out by the roots.

It's a whole new sensation for Peter, seeing Olivia on anything but red alert: the wetness from the towel soaking though his jeans and the cotton of his shirt. She's softened by the steam as it continues to curl up the sides of the walls, making the whole thing less believable. She's taut, rigid and almost shaking in his arms.

He hasn't moved since she came out of the bathroom, his hands still splayed around the swell of her hips, continuing to wait even as she kissed him like she was breathing life into him. Her lips are aggressive, sparking a fire that he can't quite meet, feeling the frenzy but unable to really allow himself to follow.

She notices, growing irritated at his lack of involvement.

"You want me to stop?" She asks against his neck, and his hands fly skyward to her shoulder blades, pulling her closer to him, chest to chest. She laughs, the low rumble in her chest that vibrating pleasantly into his.

"Olivia, I…" He manages, his fingers touching the slope of her neck, running a thumb over the bruises with more delicacy than he thought himself capable.

"Listen," she starts, hands slackened in his hair, "It's been a shitty day. I've been shot at, tossed out of a collapsing building, attacked by a shapshifter, and I lost my gun. The world's ending." She tells him, leaning back on his lap to look hard into his face, "I just want to feel something other than terror for a few minutes." If he was going to stop her before, he's powerless against her now as she reaches for his belt.

He's never seen her naked before; stripped to her underwear crawling into a tank, sure, but this was… this was different. She's different, intoxicating.

Fingers trace the new array of available skin to him, eliciting low sighs and quick, jerking motions when he skirts over the ticklish spot by her hip. The sounds of their elevated breathing floats heavily in the wetness of the room, reverberating in his ears and making his body hum. She's got him stripped, nails tracing the dusting of wiry hair on his thighs as she sinks back on him so quickly that he feels startled, a strangled sound ripping through his throat that sounds more animal than human.

_He's thinner_, she notices through lazy eyes, the normal girth she met him with in Iraq now shed into defined features of skin and bone, but she's too busy with the way his fingers scratch down each vertebra of her back to let the thought linger. She's flushed, hot and coiled and feeling more alive than she had in the last six months. She wants to keep the feeling as long as she can, racing through the emotions as she nears the top of the rollercoaster, wanting desperately to surge forward.

Peter has the vague but acute knowledge that he's being used. Olivia's hips rocking into his, the skim of lips against the crook of his neck and the subtle pain of fingers twining too forcefully through his hair all on the forefront, but he's strangely okay with the fact as long as she doesn't stop what she's doing in this instant—feeling the wild gasps against his skin and he's clenching everything in response.

There's a peculiar sound in the distance but he's far too gone to pay any attention to what it is when she turns rigid and against him, sucking in and holding it deep in her chest and he follows, letting the wave pound through him like rain, bracing her hips and he's fine with losing the prospect of showering forever.

It's when she's laying limp against him that he hears the same strange sound as before.

A sliding thump overhead and when Olivia lifts her head away from his chest he knows she hears it too. Her eyes lift skyward and when it's repeated she's off him in an instant, pulling the towel over her and he follows suit: sliding into his jeans with a panicked thundering of his heart against the inside of his ribs.

The door rattles, swinging open completely—the steam billowing toward the figure.

"What the hell is going on in here?" Comes the loud angry voice through the dense fog of steam.

Olivia and Peter share the exact same look of confusion before the figure stumbles through the door and into the room, effectively trapping them inside.

"Well, shit." Peter mutters under his breath and they ready themselves to fight.


	7. Norman the Bookkeep

All feedback welcomed

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><p>"What the hell are you doing in here?" The voice repeats.<p>

Olivia pulls the towel tighter over her and watches with Peter as the man's face comes into focus through threshold of the door, parting through the steam

It's a man's voice, older and halfway strangled when he pushes through the door for Olivia and Peter to see he's not an immediate threat. Short and stocky, the buttons on his dark flannelled shirt pulling tight over his chest in a way that Olivia's sure it wasn't originally his. He's gripping his left arm as blood seeps tellingly through his fingers.

"I've got a gun." The man says, almost as an afterthought. They both can see his hands are empty, the sheen of sweat on round face dripping.

"We're not here to hurt you." Peter says as calmly as he can manage through the hammering of his heart. He's got one hand outstretched in front of them, knowing better to air on caution.

"Are you one of them?" They're asked, the terrified voice trying to sound unimpressively dangerous.

"One of whom?" Olivia asks. Even without looking at her Peter knows she's thinking back to where they left the pipe.

"The bastards who keeps pillaging the whole goddamned state." The man's eyes are wide, bloodshot and just a little too crazy for Peter's comfort. Taking a step back as the man makes his way into the room as a precaution seems prudent.

"Why is the shower still on?" He finally asks, deflated, hobbling into the room.

"We hadn't had a hot shower in ages." Olivia answers, standing firm beside him despite being alost naked. When the man stumbles and flops onto the bed does Olivia treks back to the bathroom. Peter hears the squeal and the water's cut. She disappears behind the closed door and Peter's left alone in the room with the old man that looks about as threatening as Walter.

"You're hurt." Peter states, watching the labored breathing and bleeding arm without making a move in his direction, "I can take a look."

More wheezing, little gasps of pain as the man pushes himself up into a seated position. Peter guesses that he either believes that they aren't resisters or is too hurt to do much about it if they were. So he takes a few tentative steps in his direction, hearing Olivia's entrance from the bathroom behind him.

"You a doctor?" He asks, letting Peter take a step closer but keeping a wary eye on him as he peels the flannel shirt back.

"Not exactly," Peter tells him scathingly. The gash is deep, _really deep. _It pools black over the torn skin, stretched tight and white at the edges. It's already infected. "Cops." Peter abridges, when he's given a tight scowl.

"Cops." The man repeats, taking in their clothing and looking thoroughly unconvinced.

"FBI," Olivia amends, "Or used to be." Peter cuts a gaze through her that she ignores.

The guy's lips pull, nodding approvingly.

"So you know what those _things _are. That caused all this." The tone is firm, Peter freezes. He looks to Olivia for an answer.

"Yes." Olivia starts cryptically.

"So what they're saying is right? That this is a zombie apocalypse."

"Who's saying that?" Peter sidesteps.

"They're not zombies." Olivia's voice leaves no room for argument.

"What's your name?" Peter interjects, prodding a little around the edges of the gash.

The squat man twists his head to face Peter, his face sickly pale. He deliberates for a minute before answering, as Olivia hands him the small kit of their medical supplies. Her face grim looking.

"Norman. It's Norman." he answers as his chest erupts into wet coughs.

"Well Norman," Peter's face scrounges up as he catches a glimpse of white through the worst of the wound, "You're going to need stitches."

"Don't bother." Norman clips.

"What were you doing out there, in all that?" Olivia asks.

"What are you two doing in here?" Norman retorts. Peter and Olivia share a conspiratorial look.

"My wife's out there." Norman answers without waiting, his breath coming in great draws, sucking thin through his throat. Peter's pouring what's left of their alcohol into the wound, causing an electric hiss to erupt and another stretch of hacking as Norman doubles over, smothering a hand over his cough.

"She's out there?" Olivia asks, shocked. She inches around to sit rigid the leather chair, elbows against knees as she leans, keeping a keen eye on the man as he hisses against Peter's fingers.

Norman doesn't respond; both eyes squeezed shut as Peter takes out some gauze to wrap around the meaty part of the wound. Peter can see the loss washing through the older man's features. He recognizes it.

His words are low, intimate, like he was talking to an old friend.

"She's changed, isn't she?" He asks without it really being a question and Norman sputters a little. Olivia looks at Peter with wide eyes, finding his clear blue ones.

"She's one of _them?"_ She asks, horrified. "And you're what? Visiting her?" Her incredulous tone garners a hard stare from Peter.

Norman fades a little against Peter, his sweaty brow angry. "She's my wife." He tells her and Olivia grimaces. He twists his head back to Peter as the last of the gauze is tied together. "That's fine, thank you." Peter nods and stands, but something he sees freezes him for a full second.

"How long?" Olivia asks, noticing Peter's face whiten.

More hacking. Norman sputters blood that he catches in his hand, some escaping to dribble down his chin. She stands, concerned.

"Almost two months."

Olivia stretches her arms over her head to smooth back the wet wavy strands off her forehead, Norman raising his voice to continue over her. "She's trapped in the basement of our home. I go to make sure she's okay."

"_Okay," _Olivia mumbles under her breath, turning away from them as Peter snaps her name on his lips as a warning.

"This is our bookstore, our life together. Our retirement." Norman rumbles, breathing hot. He pulls his lips up into a smile, like he's remembering something pleasant, his teeth stained in rust. "Guess it just came earlier than we thought."

Olivia's about to snarl back before being cut back by Peter's voice, "Did you visit her today? Is that how you got injured?" It's strangely calm, completely in control. Olivia knows that something's terribly wrong.

Norman's eyes swivel to look at to him, his breathing short. The jerking movements tumble off his chest like a hummingbird's trapped inside. He's waxy looking, the skin slick. Peter extends a hand to the tattered collar of John's shirt, pulling it down his neck to reveal the chunk of skin that's missing. Peter goes a little grey.

"Oh, god." Olivia breathes. She doesn't have to see it; she has all the confirmation she needs from Peter's cautiously terrified face, taking backward strides into Olivia. Norman's neck jerks violently to one side and there's a cracking noise that makes Olivia's stomach heave. He lets out a whoosh like all air's been punches out of his lungs.

"We've gotta get the hell out of here." Peter's voice is low, the pale face of the man they just met going smooth, his eyes rolling back. There's the ticking of time passing from the old clock hanging on the wall and neither of them move, watching cautiously and hardly breathing.

She doesn't answer, taking cautious steps toward the body. Peter's tearing around the place, picking up anything that looks useful and tossing it in the bag. There's a crowbar nestled neatly in the corner and he grabs it.

"Olivia, it's time to go." He spats, balancing the crowbar in his palm before adding it to the bag and zipping it to toss around his shoulders. He stops short when he notices Olivia's a foot away from Norman's slumped body, her head cocked. Peter's blood boils in his skin—he takes two steps in her direction before the sucking sound splits the soundless room.

Norman's eyes flicker open and the air melts a little around them. Olivia's rooted as Norman's body jerks, skin rippling under his clothing. Olivia watches the transformation with an air of interest as she locks on as his pupils are blown wide open into the muted black, flat and lifeless and unseeing. There's the same horrible gurgling sound as lips pull back over teeth.

"Olivia-" Peter's about to shout at her _to get back_ but she moves faster than he could recognize, the glint of the pipe shining as it's lifted high over her squared shoulders. He misses the downswing but he hears it, the wet thud of cracking bone as the pipe disappears and Peter's left to stare opened mouthed and horrified.

The former form of Norman the book-keep jerks backward, half his face obscured by the impact of the blunt force trauma, hissing angrily as Olivia's already lining up like she's handling a Louisville Slugger rather than a lead pipe and swings. Blood explodes as Norman's jaw is nearly disconnected, spraying the walls, the books, everything. Peter jerks back from the blood, his own voice tight when he manages to speak.

"Jesus Christ, Olivia." He yelps, grabbing her elbow as she rears up for another blow.

"He's one of them now," her face calm, eyes cold. She could be talking about the goddamned weather her temperament is so even. It sends a shiver over Peter's skin. She catches Peter's gaze and shakes his arm off when the corpse sputters and the nearly headless Norman tries to pull himself back upright. Olivia drops the pipe again. There's another sickening crunch and he moves no more.

She holds for a moment, hands covered in Norman's blood, saturating the fibers her coat, trapped under her nails. When she turns to face Peter again there are little droplets of blood spattered against her cheeks. Air is rattling through her chest but her hands are deathly still. Peter reaches out to her face, touching a spot on her cheek with a soft curl of his knuckle. She jerks away. His hand drops.

Wordlessly, Peter opens his hand to her, not asking but not giving her a chance to say no, either. She averts her eyes momentarily before handing over the pipe. The cold look has changed, morphed on her features and all she looks is tired. She shoves past him into the bathroom, closing it behind her—closing Peter out—and he's left standing in the spot where Olivia was moments ago, holding the bloody pipe in hand, the rush of water sounding and wishing desperately for a shower to wash away what he just witnessed.


	8. The Begining

A/N: So I had promised that I'd get this out late last night, which I failed miserably at. Here's to hoping it's still Friday somewhere.

* * *

><p>It was in the basement lab when they first heard the commotion, when everything went decidedly to shit.<p>

Peter was brewing coffee while Olivia filled out paperwork in the confines of her office when the first clustering of voices began to collect outside in the hallway: the low wordless mumblings of too many people talking over one another, the clucking of confused sounds all molding together. Peter yelped in pain when he sloshed hot coffee onto his hand when the first angry shout broke through the steady vibration of rumbling tongues.

"Walter, stay here." Peter snapped, shaking his hand when Walter made his angry face over the body he was dissecting. The voices were growing in volume. High, terrified words and screams followed shortly, panic driven and terrified. He followed Olivia through the hallways and into the bedlam of students and professors, all scurrying in different directions, great crashing waves pushing and knocking sharp elbows into them as they past.

"What the hell's going on?" Peter fisted a gawky teen that had run face first into him as he was rounding the corner.

"Courtyard!" the kid screamed, breaking loose of Peter's grip to continue his way through the hallway. Their footfall lost in the clatter of shuffling feet, not stopping until they made it through the herd and into the fresh air leading to the courtyard.

Peter remembered the terrifying sensation creeping up his spine as they stood beneath explosive pops of vicious orange rings scattered across the horizon. Even though it was only mid-afternoon, it burned their eyes in its brilliance as it erupted in clapping thunderbolts of fire. The sun sat low over the flaying bodies of students, casting long shadows and spreading a wide girth that they had to shove through to get to the front lines, Peter breaking through first.

He wished he hadn't.

It looked just as human as anything Peter'd ever seen, but it was all wrong; slouched forward, a frenzied control its limbs as it wandered, the skin charred and rotted on its back like it was dressed in the wrong sized clothes. Peter stopped in his tracks when it looked at him; locking its dead eyes and baring its teeth dangerously. It took him a second too late to call for Olivia.

He stood rooted, transfixed and at a loss for explanation. Where he could normally find patterns and scientific constants and find comfort in knowing that nothing is inexplicable—this scared the holy shit out of him.

It was like every zombie horror movie he'd ever laughed at as a teenager. If he didn't feel the heat of falling sky on his face and the smell of sulfur burning in his lungs he probably would have laughed at the sheer ridiculousness of it all; if he weren't plunged face-first into freezing horror when it twisted its head to grab onto a passerby as she tried to flee.

He opened his mouth to shout but found he had no voice to warn the girl.

It ripped its teeth into the girl that couldn't have been older than nineteen, her blonde hair stained red as she screamed as muscle and skin were shredded from her neck and exploding into bright fountains of blood. He couldn't move. Couldn't do anything to help the girl. He couldn't help himself.

He felt Olivia push in beside him, shout something in another language before firing a round that took the face off the thing from a distance of six feet. The chaos around them exploded into pandemonium at the ring of the gunshot crashing through the open air, snapping Peter back into existence.

He felt oddly stiff-limbed and overstuffed, pushing through the screams to the fallen body of the girl; slipping in the mixture of blood and mercury to realize what the _thing _was, and the revelation made it all the more terrifying. His hands shake as he held pressure to the gaping wound in the girl's torn neck, looking for help from Olivia, from _anyone_ as her skin cooled under the hard pads of his fingers.

"Oh god," he says aloud even though he knows Olivia can't hear him, "it's a shapshifter."

"We gotta get her to Walter," he shouted as Olivia pushed her way over, wide eyed; gun drawn—looking at the headless corpse. He could tell her carotid artery is severed, the pumping blood gushing and staining his fingers. She was long dead before Peter even started applying pressure.

"Olivia!" his voice is firm, demanding her attention as another body pushes past him, kicking him hard enough his hands almost slips.

She found him then, and they're trapped in the little bubble of just _what this means_ for a few solid moments before the body shifted under the cramping fingers of Peter's left hand.

It took a total of thirteen seconds for Peter to realize that something was terribly wrong-to tear his hand away as the girl jerks upright, snapping her jaw at Peter's bloodied fingers. He tripped backward over the body of the faceless shapeshifter as he kicked himself away from the reanimated corpse of the blood-red haired girl as it clawed toward him, the same dead angry unseeing eyes sighting him.

There's the ringing of gunshots, Olivia shoots her twice in the back, not even phasing it before she aims higher, and Peter's bathed in blood and left unable to sleep peacefully for the following six months.

* * *

><p>Peter's been cautiously eyeing her for the last twenty minutes and she's just about had enough.<p>

The feeling of his eyes along her back as he trails her in silence along the broken terrain of what remains of a street she used to be able to remember but can't now, but she can't tell which annoys her more.

After handing Peter the pipe, she escaped into the bathroom, the choking sensation threatening to overwhelm her. Her reaction to Norman's turn had alarmed him, she knows, but it was her lack of reaction that alarmed _her_. She didn't even pause to think of him as a person they'd been talking to moments before, a man with a wife and a family. She only thought of him as a threat.

She washed his blood off her hands in the sink, took a couple deep, steadying breathes in the mirror and that was that. She opened the door and walked past him out of the bunker.

"You wanna quit staring at me?" she says over her shoulder, catching him off guard. She's not sure what time it is, squinting against the sun that's bright but not enough to make their walk warm or comfortable.

"Just want to make sure you don't go all Mad Max on me when my back's turned." Peter says, his voice clipped and double dipped in sarcasm.

Olivia comes to a dead halt, hands on her hips, expression livid.

"You got something you wanna say?" she says tersely as Peter brushes by her, leveraging the bag to separate them. He cringes at her tone—he really doesn't need any more shifters attracting themselves to their location right now.

"Nope," he mutters, taking a turn down an alley that will cut their way back to Harvard.

"Hey," she snaps, taking long strides after him, grabbing an elbow that he has to resist the urge to shake off. His emotions are set deep in his face, angry lines creeping from his eyes to his ears; the line between his forehead a flat scowl.

"This about what happened back there?" her voice is hushed, but he doesn't miss the undercurrent of anger.

This time he does shake off her arm. His hands ball into the pockets of his coat and he takes on a stance in a way that reminds her of some old western cowboy. He cocks a hip as he stands and it's the sorta thing that makes her want to both straddle him and punch him in the face.

"Which part?" he accuses heatedly, letting his own voice rise against his better judgment, "the part where you jumped me or the part where you brained ol' Norman back there?"

She's definitely siding with violence. She wished she had the damned pipe.

"Did you forget what he was? What _they all_ are?" she snaps, ignoring his precocious smirk.

Peter feels the heat radiating off her face, the anger that's barely smothered there but he doesn't care. He notices her aversion and he puts together a million ways to manipulate it; gauging how to gain the upper hand.

"Yeah, well if I ever get bit you just leave me the hell alone." His voice a low rumble, continuing on his path, feeling the heat at the back of his skull as she stares daggers at him.

"You'd rather me lock you up in some basement and visit once a week? Maybe bring flowers?" she's shouting now, angry and bewildered and somehow drowning in the overwhelming feeling of rejection. She brushes them all off her shoulder and focuses intently on trying to set his head on fire. He halts his movements, his shoulders curling.

"This is the fucking apocalypse if you haven't noticed!" she taunts, her voice reverberating off the little cracks of the buildings surrounding them. She wants to bring the rest of the goddamned building down with her rage. "This isn't something Walter can just solve in the lab. It's real, and it is happening and we're all going to die if you don't figure out which side you on. You'd better just come to terms with it now."

He spins on her, taking long strides to where she's standing to grab her arm to shove her into the concrete of the building, backing her into the part that's still mostly intact. Her mouth falls open; eyes spilling their surprise and siphoning anger. She twists to shake him off but he holds strong, taking a step into her to almost pin her against the building. She lets out an unintended shudder at his proximity.

"I know what they are," he growls, choosing his words wisely as he sees her fist coil, "I've seen them firsthand, what they're capable of." He thinks back to the dumpster, to the courtyard, all the way back to Charlie. The unfiltered terror clenches his chest, but he pushes it down to match her fury.

"Then what's your problem?" she hisses, holding steadfast his intense gaze as her pulse sputters in her chest.

"I haven't seen you like that," he murmurs honestly, wanting to smooth the little lines by her mouth when she pulls her lips down at the corners. "That's the problem."

He dips his head close to hers, so close that she thinks he might kiss her,_ might bite her_, her lips parting as she sucks in the air that he displaces as he moves. He bypasses to fix his mouth next to her ear, the even breathing on the skin there breaking into little goose bumps.

"I'd leave you in the basement." He whispers gently and the shiver he elicits is so explosive that she twists her neck away to cover it. And just like that he's gone, leaving her standing alone against the wall, her head reeling as he walks back to Harvard without her.

For once she doesn't know what to say.


	9. The Lab

They walk the rest of the way back to Harvard in silence, the muted intensity between them heavy on their shoulders. She keeps track of the cracking asphalt to keep herself busy, purposefully averting her eyes every time they trek past the decaying remains of either human or shapeshifter, unable to tell a difference most of the time.

It's late in the afternoon when they finally reach the deserted wilderness of the courtyard, Peter first then Olivia following each to their own thoughts.

The landscape of Harvard appears abandoned, _normal even_, save for the makeshift walls of sheeted bodies that line the farthest west-end of the college. Bare feet poke out on the ends where there wasn't enough fabric to cover the corpses entirely and they'd run out of body bags within the first month.

The stench is horrendous; the stink of rotted flesh that's an unwelcome guest on all their clothing and in their skin that even the decontamination showers can't scrub away. It alone is almost enough to keep the rest of the world away, what's left of it anyway. It also helps that they're currently residing in what the military fashioned as "Ground Zero" and that's kept them relatively safe from the Resisters.

Olivia wonders if he chose this particular route because it's the fastest or because of his knowledge of her utter reluctance to go anywhere near their own little Berlin Wall and he wants to stick it to her a little. She has a suspicion that it's the latter. They pass the bodies silently to the stretch of the courtyard where it had all first started; the brittle grass splotched white even though the body has been long since removed and incinerated when they still thought they could contain it.

"This stays between us," she hears him finally break the silence, his voice startling her. He's stopped walking, looking at her for the first time since the alley. "All of it. Not to either of them." He's giving her a smooth smile that doesn't quite reach his eyes and she's reminded what conman he used to be. She also knows him well enough to tell he's been practicing. When she stares hard at him, he tacks finally on a soft "_please" _at the end.

"You're afraid he'll want to experiment on us?" she tries at a joke but it lacks the kick she was going for so it lands flat between them. She's never been that funny anyway.

"I don't want him to worry." Peter answers simply, his eyes trailing beyond her and out into the courtyard that's backing them. His reasoning surprises her, surrendering a small nod, trailing after him when he continues to the side of the building. She stands back as he pushes a shoulder to the pallet of wood that's stationed to block the entrance to the door.

"_Just in case." _Peter had joked when they began to create their own little impenetrable fortress when the CDC evacuated Boston.

Peter makes quick work of the locks and they squeeze in, sliding the wood back in place before sealing them in with the sturdy reinforcement of metal locks Peter installed.

The halls of Harvard are deathly silent, but oddly comforting in their familiarity. She thinks that she should feel anything but a homey feeling for this place, but the lingering smell of wax on the floors gives her a sense of recognition which she holds tight.

"It feels like the world makes more sense here, doesn't it?" Peter says offhandedly as they reach the door with the worn names of WILLIAM BELL and WALTER BISHOP emblazed on the clouded glass. He looks calmer than he feels, rapping a few times on the glass as they wait.

"Like nothing's changed out there?" she answers even though she gets he's being rhetorical. She knows how he feels. She feels it too.

There's a loud commotion from inside the lab, the sound of locks unclanking as they're released with shaking hands.

"Listen," she starts, trying to race the fumbling fingers she knows to be Walters. "Back there, that was just—"

"—I know." He answers, shaking her off with sideways smirk.

The door swings open and Walter's presence dwarfs the space of the door, the smile wide on the wrinkled skin of his face. His beard if full, bushy and reminds Peter more of Grizzly Adams every day he keeps it. It's a flashback to St. Claire's every time Peter sees it, feeling a swell of regret and affection.

"Peter!" Walter ushers them in, clapping a hand on Peter's back before turning to Olivia. "You were gone longer than you said. We were worried." He tells Olivia as Peter closes the door and resets the locks on the door that Walter's left wide open.

"Sorry we worried you," Olivia smiles warmly, letting Walter's hand pat her own before turning his attention back to Peter as he wedges the last reinforcement into place. "We weren't able to find much."

Walter's retreating backside shuffles over her words to where Peter's shrugging off the bag to hand over for inspection.

"Couldn't find any cotton candy." Peter says sarcastically, but the frown lines in Walter's face shows he missed the joke. He ushers the bag over to a cleared piece of counter and overturns it, poking at a peach can in approval. Peter shrugs out of his coat, tossing it onto whatever space is closest, in this case the little couch he uses as a bed they dragged in when they took up permanent residence.

"I just cleaned this place up after Walter!" Astrid's angry voice is softened with a warm smile as she passes by Peter, carrying a cardboard box filled with papers. Her presence always garners a smirk from him—she looks the same as always aside from the gigantic curly hair.

Astrid notices his smirk and rolls her eyes, grabbing his coat off the little couch with a free hand to toss back to him, an exasperated grin meeting his own.

Peter smiles ruefully, gaining a rougher shove of his coat back into his chest than he thinks necessary, but the humor stops when her eyes narrow on him suspiciously.

"Something's happened." Astrid says like a fucking mind reader and Peter feels his chest tighten under her penetrating gaze, her voice just low enough that no one else hears except Peter. He purposely looks confused, eyes steady on Astrid's face and to Olivia.

She's not fooled; her eyes dart to Olivia like a panther to scrutinize as she shrugs out of her coat nearby. Peter keeps himself from following her, looking instead at the cracks in the ceiling as he wrestles away from Astrid's stronghold.

"I'll hang it up." He says a twinge higher than he intends.

_How the hell does she do that? _He thinks wildly, but they're both soon distracted by Walter's voice from across the lab:

"We saw you coming on the monitors—they're working quite impressively. The siren I could do without." He's already found the peaches, Peter notices with disapproval that one can is already half gone.

"Good," Peter says as he crosses the lab to get away from Astrid, moving next to Walter to look out beyond the courtyard on the monitor. The grainy black and white images showcase the dead unmoving bodies surrounding Harvard.

Peter notices there's something on the rolled sleeves of Walter's cardigan. A red something.

"Walter, is that-" Peter asks, fingering the spot, revulsion growing as he prods the stain. It's bold against the wool fibers of Walter's cardigan. Walter grins devilishly as he drops another slice in his mouth, spinning to walk toward the counter, Peter in hot pursuit.

"Tell me that's not blood, Walter." Peter says tersely, trailing after his father who's abandoned the can next to a Bunsen burner. He can feel Olivia's questioning eyes on them but he's too busy trying to figure out where they've hidden the body.

"In order to find a cure, we must first learn," Walter repeats the same words Peter's heard a thousand times, eliciting a sudden headache to form behind Peter's right eye. Walter pushes past him to the strewn pages of his scribbling and old files; notes upon notes stacked precariously on each other, threatening to spill over as they inch closer to the sides of the counter where they're perched. Walter had been taking notes and conducting experiments since they first discovered that the things were from the other side, the box Astrid was carrying now sitting among the mess.

Peter's sleeves are pushed up high on his forearms as he tries to rub the throbbing out of his eyeball. Walter has a sudden look of consternation as Peter rubs; taking steps closer to inspect something he finds interest interesting. His mood shifting like a record switching to a new song.

"What took so long?" Walter asks and Peter's rubbing stops. The eye that's not scrubbed raw gawks at his father and he suddenly damns the sudden moment of lucidity.

"What?" Peter fires blindly, stalling.

"You're usually gone for only a few hours. You two were gone for over a day." Walter voice tempers on discovery, evaluating Peter in a way that rakes his nerves.

"The normal places were cleared out," Peter half-invents, skirting over the topics he didn't want to discuss, especially not with Walter, "we had to go beyond the 'safe zone.'" The word gets him the same disapproving look from Walter as it does from Olivia; glaring up from the stack of folders she's reading.

Of course there was no safe zone. It was something Peter had invented for Walter's sake so Olivia and he could leave the lab to scavenge for food without Walter having a nervous breakdown. Olivia didn't approve.

"What is it that you've discovered, Walter?" Olivia interjects, breaking Walter's study of Peter's fabrication. Her voice seems to snap him back to a new song. Peter shoots Olivia a silent _thank you_ but is only met with her impassive face when Walter's not watching.

"I've made great discoveries from the dissection." Walter's off like a rocket ship again, checking his pockets for the clump of crumpled paper that he smoothes out on the tables over by Olivia. The throbbing nearly blacks Peter out as he comprehend the words.

"Dissection?" Peter's words are back to the high-pitched strangled sound. If Olivia is shocked by whatever Walter shows her she hides it well, an eyebrow jumping just enough to betray her. Walter appears baffled by Peter's reaction, turning to him with a set jaw.

"As I've said before, it's necessary to be able to come up with a viable theory." Peter inches away from his father, flexing and releasing the tension in his hand as he pinches his fingers together to pinpoint Walter's logic. He has no intention of seeing whatever it is that Walter's mind came up with.

"Where?" is all he can manage, feeling Astrid slipping past him from the far corner of the lab, Walter's eyes shift guiltily from her to Peter.

Ah, Peter thinks.

"We've talked about this, Walter," Peter starts as he clomps down the steps to the covered gurney, the blanket covering tossed haphazardly over one end, "it's too dangerous to bring them into the lab."

Peter stops short when he realizes that whatever's under the blanket is small, as only half of the gurney is covered with it. Then he realizes that the blanket is familiar. The same blue one that Peter uses on the couch…

"Is that my blanket? From my bed?" Peter's volcano erupts. Walter looks sheepish as Astrid looks mildly surprised, taking a few steps to distance herself from the scientist.

Peter ignores Walter's outcry for him to stop, gripping an end to _his blanket_ and pulling the cover back.

He instantly regrets it, jumping away from the table so quickly that the bars on the railing bruise his already battered back when he connects with the short incline of the staircase. Walter's descent behind him is noisy and hurried, Olivia and Astrid trailing behind him.

"Walter, that's a head." Blurts Peter as he points an outstretched finger to the bodiless remains of the shifter. It's perched on the trunk of its neck, the back of its skull removed and the skin opened like the ends of a book.

He wasn't quite sure what he expected, but it wasn't _that. _

Despite being in the predicament of being dismembered, the head twitches: cheeks jerking upward while an eyebrow jumps, jolting a new wave of revulsion in Peter's stomach. The fluttering cheek quirks up every so often like it was trying unsuccessfully to smile.

"Very reductive, son." Walter's voice is darker than Peter's heard in a while. Olivia's down the stairs to join in on the viewing, mouth curved in a permanent "O" shape. Walter hurries around the other side of the gurney, picking up a scalpel to insert it into the opened cavernous space where most of the brain's been removed, Peter notices. The twitching stops and Walter looks up expectantly.

"No," Olivia says, not being able to pull her eyes away from the face like she might shoot it if it moved again. "You didn't just get that thing to turn off, did you?" She grips Peter's arm in her surprise, and Peter forgets for a moment about the head.

"Of course not," Walter says as he puts down the scalpel to show them something grayish on the tip that looked like chewed gum, "merely severed its sensory input." Olivia's face flushes green. Peter's squeezing the bridge of his nose and concentrates of breathing evenly.

"Where did you get it?" Olivia asks, her voice calmer than her pallor suggests.

Walter's focus turns to Astrid, who looks less than amused. She tilts her head toward the door they'd just entered and says "Courtyard" in a way that suggests she's not interested in going into the "how" of the question.

"Did you discover anything?" Peter asks through clenched teeth. Again, it's Astrid who answers.

"If by scrubbing shapeshifter brain out of forceps is not as fun as it sounds, then yes. Loads." She says lightly, feeling the tension tightened around the gurney. She replaces Peter's bedspread back over the head and ushers them all away.

Olivia's still looking pale as she takes the steps two at a time until she's cleared from the sight of the covered face, the first one out of the landing. Peter watches her as she goes, barely listening to Walter's rundown of findings.

"Their brains are remarkably similar to our own," Walter says as he follows them back up the stairs, a little bounce of excitement in his step. "Except the infected brains have a damaged amygdala, although it would be impossible to prove unless…"

"Stop. Right there." Peter spins on Walter, stopping him in his tracks. "I know where you're going with this and it's not going to happen."

"We need another sample. A live one." Walter continues like he hadn't just been interrupted. Peter groans in response, wanting very much to just crawl onto the refuge of his coach and sleep. There's a click of a door and he finds that Olivia's disappeared in her office.

"You've got to be kidding me, Walter." Peter grumbles as he sits heavily on the couch, knees cracking as an echo to his annoyance. "You want us to track down an undead shapeshifter to bring back into the lab for you to experiment on?" He already can see from the way Walter's brow pulls that yes, that's exactly what he intends. Peter leans his head back and closes his eyes, trying in vain to block Walter's gaze.

"It doesn't have to be a shapeshifter," Walter says like he's delivering good news, "it can be a turned human too—I can test the differences in the neurobiology before we go to Massive Dynamic."

Peter's eyes pop open.

"We've discussed this, Walter. It's at least a two weeks for us to get there on foot." The incredulous anger severs Peter's last nerve. "There's no way we're walking the distance."

"We've discussed nothing," Walter's voice is heated, picking up the rumpled piece of paper he showed Olivia earlier and thrusting it into Peter's hands. "If I had live subjects I can trace the path of the virus. See how the shapeshifters carry it; how they're able to pass it on."

Peter scans the familiar scrawl of Walter's penmanship, stopping on a point that Olivia must had seen earlier.

"You think they retain fragments of memory?" Peter reads.

"The evidence would suggest so, yes." Walter responds, pulling out another piece of crumbled paper to scribble notes on the desk behind him. Peter sighs; the weight heavy on his chest as he lifts himself to stand to give Walter his notes back. "Only on a cortical level. Their actions remain fueled on aggression, not instinct."

"Okay," Peter says, bargaining. "If you find solid proof, Walter. Then we'll go to Massive Dynamic." He holds the papers out for Walter to take. Walter looks at him for a moment and nods, the notes sliding between them silently.

For some reason Peter feels like he's just sealed his fate when the pages skim through his fingers.


	10. Olivia's Room

Peter finds Olivia hiding out in her office, knocking once before letting himself in and closing the door behind him. He doesn't bother to wait for the formality of an invitation.

"Hey," he says quietly. The air in her office is thick; undisturbed.

He finds her on the futon that doubles as her little bed, sitting so still that she's almost lost in the backdrop of her surroundings. She's someplace far away, eyes unfocused, her chin resting against the curl of her fingers. Peter's voice finally draws her focus to look at him.

"What's up?" she asks through her fingers like she's just noticed him.

"I was about to ask you the same thing." Peter says casually, sweeping through her makeshift bedroom in hopes that a replacement blanket might present itself magically. He gives up with a sigh, stuffing his hands into his pockets and looks for a place to make himself less uncomfortable.

She shrugs, leaning back to perch her feet against the coffee table, reminding him of the traditional Olivia he remembers. He settles on occupying the space on the coffee table, sliding her feet gently out of the way to sit.

He doesn't come in much, and for some reason that makes him feel guilty but not a tad surprised. She's always preferred her privacy; he respects that. There aren't many places for them all to hide from each other living in the lab, even a dilapidated and enormous one at that. Her room is and has always been orderly and neat, exactly what he'd expect from a military brat and she never fails to impress. It looks like her old office save for the futon and the coffee table and a few picture frames they rescued from her apartment before things got really bad.

One's a fairly recent one of her and Ella, the other she's standing next to Rachel as young girls with matching braces grinning back at the camera. Olivia's smiles have the same identical uncomfortable pull of her lip and it makes Peter's chest tighten in a way that he wouldn't dare call endearment. He'd never thought much of the photos before, but they make him uncomfortable now, the little bites of uneasiness snaking up his skin.

"You want to talk about it?" He asks openly enough. His eyes shoot to the ceiling to avoid looking directly at her. He waits for the flat no without hope for much else.

"What is there to talk about?" she answers, slipping her feet under her and he knows her well enough to know when she's being evasive. Her face is blank but her eyes wary, her hair falling in lazy curves down her shoulders. Trying her best to ignore him.

He gives her his best _you know exactly what_ look but her face remains perfectly impassive, reminding Peter never to play poker with her. That's how she's going to be. He tries out a new tactic.

"About what happened back in the bookstore." He says evenly, her eyes darting to look at him finally.

"How's your head?" she asks offhandedly and instinctually he raises a hand to his forehead, disturbing the blood crusted gash under the band-aid and he hisses.

"I just remembered it hurts like hell." He retorts as he shakes his hand away like it might help the burning over his eyebrow. Olivia greets him with a rolling of her eyes and lifts herself off the couch, retrieving the small black case and bottle of iodine from her desk drawer and settles back on the couch to unzip it, leaving the iodine next to Peter on the coffee table.

"Don't even try to get close to me with that," Peter points to the iodine with his chin, leaning away from her until she stops unzipping. He finally relaxes when she puts the little kit down next to her and leaves her hands open for him to see.

"Fine," she says lightly, hands unmoving. He gives her a suspicious look.

"Hey, I want to ask you something." She says innocently, leaning toward him like she's about to tell him a secret and he follows her without thinking, mimicking her exactly. His heart puckers a twinge.

Without warning and behind a sympathetic mask, her hand reaches out to his forehead and rips the band-aid completely off; taking the top layer of crusted skin with it.

Peter's yelp is louder than he intends, holding his flattened hand over the now bleeding wound, eyes stinging and feeling ridiculously stupid.

"Don't tell me you're still mad about 'three.'" He mutters darkly as she picks up the iodine after she pulls more gauze out of the little black pouch.

"Either you can let me clean it or I can let Walter." Her smile is sweet as she tells him threateningly and garners a mutinous scowl in return, but it works. His sigh is loud and dejected as he slumps his shoulders like a petulant teenager to show his displeasure at her blackmail. But he lets her scald him with the iodine without twitching. Much.

She's close to him, fingers tracing the path of the gash and he takes the opportunity to steal a peek at her shoulder. Her neck is blotchy red and inflamed in parts from the alley. She presses harder than she needs to and he bites back the invective he wants to snap. They sit on the seesaw of their silent standoff; Peter waiting to see which side tips.

"Do you believe him?" Olivia startles him with her gentle voice, her eyes focused on his forehead. The pressure of her fingers against his forehead falters for a moment. He breathes out as he decides.

"I think the bigger question is if _you _believe him," he returns, watching her face carefully as she drops the bloodied gauze next to him to dig out another band-aid. "I mean, we are talking about Walter here." He gauges to see what she really wants to hear.

She's stuck on the corners of paper lining the bandage, flicking one end with a thumb and forgetting to peel it apart. Peter's dead quiet and trying to match her breathing, afraid to think too hard about the logic of Walter's scribbles and have the conclusion play across his face.

"And if he's right? If they retain some memory?" her voice firm now, but she still won't look him in the face, angling to rest on the shell of his ear.

Peter moves purposely into her space, tasting her doubt and curling a single finger to redirect her gaze. Her eyes are a vivid green, filled with endless questions to which he has no answers.

"You think what I did was wrong." She says flatly, finding his eyes with doubt then and he's a little thrown-off by her uncertainty. Whatever words he'd used to describe her, uncertain was never one of them. He takes a few moments to choose his words, rolling them across his tongue to taste them out, but none of them seem to quantify the comfort he knows she's looking for.

"Will anything I say actually help?" He offers honesty. Her head nods as her eyes fall back to peeling the corners again, not able to separate the two sides. Peter's never been the most adept at offering solace, so he elects silence, opting instead to reach out to steady her hand, squeezing it briefly in his before reaching for the bandage and peeling the paper apart for her.

"If they retain fragments of memory, there must be a way to cure-" her voice is unsteady, leaning closer and speaking so softly that her breath is a light breeze against his cheeks, like she's afraid the others might hear them. The look on his face stops her short, reaching out to reclaim the bandage from Peter's fingers.

She reaches above him and settles the band-aid with a gentler touch and smoothes it flat against the skin. Her fingers linger in the threshold of his hairline and he has to resist the urge to push into her hand.

"It doesn't matter anyway. It's too late for him." She says and her hands come back up to smother her lips, pushing back her outburst. He knows where this is going, can see the endgame to her questions. He knows that she desperately wants to believe Walter's theory, and he knows the horrific ramifications if it does prove true. It's a terrible middle ground in which to be stuck.

"Do you think he remembered his wife?" she murmurs against her fingertips.

He's pretty sure she's not talking about the bookkeeper. Instead he sits in silence and looks to the photos that she's now gazing at with a heartbreaking expression splayed across her face. He knows she really wants to ask if he thought _they'd remember her_.

He doesn't answer. Can't answer. Won't answer. He's not sure which it is that keeps him from answering, but no words escape his mouth. He elects instead to squish in beside her on the couch, the medical aroma of the disinfectant a ripe contrast to the homey feeling he gets when he's close to her. He doesn't comfort her, not in the way she wants anyway, so he slides a hand across her back, looks away when he hears the sudden intake of breath and continues to run his hand along her back until the choking stops and she's finally silent.

He lets himself look at the pictures of her sister, the happiness framed in wood and glass and he feels an ache for Olivia's pain that he can't quite flavor. It's not his pain to endure.

"Sorry," she mumbles, swiping the back of her hand across one cheek, digging it into her eye. When she looks at him her face is serious but questioning, like she's noticing something different about him. He's uncomfortable under her muted expression and sits stone-still, hand frozen against her back. There's a charge to the air around them; playing lightly at the hair on his arms and he feels a sort of panic in his chest. The way she looks at him is fucking dangerous.

"Peter," she murmurs through red-rimmed eyes and flushed cheeks; he can't help but smile at the way her lips forms his name. His name. He swallows hard when she dips toward him, eyes dropping and her hand finding the side of his jaw. He stops breathing; choking on air and afraid that any move might be the wrong one, tipping them the wrong direction.

She seeks him out cautiously, her lips a light brush against his and he feels the panic spike; little pins pressing him hard from the inside out. His hand pulls her closer to him, the urge to touch her overwhelming.

There's a crash from outside in the lab and Peter nearly jumps straight out of his skin swallowing back his surprise with a startled cough. The sound outside is followed with a surprised shout from Walter and an exasperated chirp from Astrid and they catch the tail end of her barking "I am SO not cleaning that up."

Olivia's flushed face is hiding behind her hands and he can tell she's laughing by the way her shoulders vibrate. "Tell me he didn't knock over the head." She says through the gate of her hands.

"Better question should be who's going to clean whatever it is up." Peter strains his neck over her like he might see through the wall and into whatever Walter just destroyed. He feels absurdly off-kilter; fire red in the face and like there's too little air in the place that makes him dizzy.

He pushes back the hair from her shoulder, running a thumb over her neck as she gives him the same penetrating look that makes him feel like he's got his emotions written brightly across his face.

"Your head," she motions, running a spare finger across her mouth to hide her smirk but he doesn't bother to hide his. A quick check reveals that his gash has already bled through the first layer of plastic.

She pulls apart another band-aid and he sits still enough to let her put it on over the first. He doesn't even feel the pain anymore, just the dull thudding as a reminder.

"All better." She tries lightly, but her voice is still a bit too off to make it sound convincing. Peter gives her a tight smile, rising up so he can inspect the damage Walter's caused outside the room. He can't even get a 'thanks' out for her effort. He's too untrusting of his voice for that.

"Walter wants us to catch one. A live one." he says as he grips the doorknob, talking into the wood frame. He doesn't look back to catch the indignant face he imagines. The air's silent again with whatever she doesn't say. Finally, she answers simply:

"Then we'll catch one."

He does look at her then, a half smile that never reaches his eyes.

"You could come back," she says as an afterthought, like she doesn't mean it out loud. "You could come back tonight."

His brow furrows, squashing down his surprise. Waiting for the "but" he's expecting to follow.

"I know what you were looking for," she arches an eyebrow, letting him know he's not the only one who can be observant. "And being that you're not going to find an extra set of linens in here, you can just save yourself the misery of shacking up with Walter and come back tonight."

After a thought he lets the grin creep its way back into his features.

"Okay," he says as he opens the door, "okay."

And he clicksthe door shut behind him, not even caring what it is that Walter has done.


	11. A Simple Plan

Peter snuck back into her office after the others had retired to their own rooms for the night, the soft rapping of his knuckles against the door putting her on edge for reasons she couldn't place or completely ignored. She had the bed made up: futon spread out and taking up most of the space of her sparse office, fluffing her pillow to disguise the fact that her hands were delicately shaking. When Peter let himself in, she noticed he looked just as unsure as she felt, closing the door behind him and looking expectantly expectant, his little pillow mashed in his fist like he'd just robbed a bank.

"Change your mind yet?" he asked as a joke, quietly letting her off the hook if she wanted one. His question burned like a challenge and she was never one to shrink back from any dare, let alone one from Peter Bishop. So in her resolve she flattened her hand into her pillow with the ridiculous pink cover on it, crooked an eyebrow and told him to _move his ass already _as she crawled under the blankets herself.

Peter watched her burrow under the blanket and into the bed and was unsure for a moment what she wanted him to do. When her ruffled blonde head popped out of the top with the same smirk plastered to her face, he finally made his move and opened the other side of the blanket and shoved himself to squish in beside her.

"Christ, your feet are like ice," he muttered when she brushed against him as they settled. He was repaid with a less than subtle push of her foot against the back of one calf and he wondered how she was able to regulate body heat at all.

"You could always go back to your little couch if it's a problem," she answered sweetly; the lingering frost of her feet against the heated skin of his legs brought the feeling of triumph when he hissed in response. He was warm, and she let herself scrunch in behind him to steal some of his heat, feeling the little thrill of victory when he let her with a puff of a sigh and she decided that maybe this would be okay after all.

"You're lucky that a college futon is still more comfortable than spending a night with Walter." He yawned into his pillow as her skin started to thaw against his back. He felt a little giddy, her breath soft and even against the back of his neck as she fell asleep, and it took a while for him to relax enough for him to drift off to sleep next to her.

* * *

><p>Peter had installed the trips to the sirens exactly six weeks between when Olivia blew the face off the first shapeshifter to the military evacuation of Massachusetts and they had decidedly ignored. The sensors covered the outer perimeter of the university and gave them an early warning should danger ever arise, Peter working for two days straight scavenging enough parts from abandoned electronic stores, <em>it ain't looting if we're the last people on earth, <em>he had told Olivia when he emerged from an old Best Buy with each arm wrapped over pillaged spools of wiring and metal.

Astrid demonstrated her extraordinary value by helping him stream enough wiring to cover the necessities of their "base" with them all ending in a giant mess connected to monitors that somehow worked. It helped them all sleep a little better knowing that they'd at least get the heads up if they were about to be infiltrated by flesh-eating zombies. Peter had only managed to install the cameras a few weeks ago when the Resisters started to become more of a growing epidemic than the actual epidemic, growing braver and more ruthless by circumstance. But none of it really summed up to much more than one or two looters poking their noses in, seeing the wall of dead bodies and making their way out again in equal speed.

Tonight, however the sirens were damn useful.

The screeching wakes Olivia first, Peter second as the feed blares over the deathly silence of the lab with painful urgency. Olivia's up like a fireman sniffing out smoke, throwing on clothes before Peter's conscious enough to roll himself out of bed behind her, muttering under his breath as he too dresses.

"Probably just another false trip," he grunts as he slides into the discarded pair of jeans that are crumbled on the floor. He looks to Olivia as she stalks around the room and the urgent nature of her actions makes his heart crank up in speed.

"What?" he asks as he stuffs his head into a long sleeved shirt. The door's thrown open and he has to race after her to keep up with her strides.

Astrid and Walter are already at the camera monitors when they make it out of the office, Walter looking a bit ruffled and Astrid's hands disappearing into the depths of her hair to block the blaring signal. Astrid's eyebrows arch as she watches them emerge together; Walter doesn't notice at all.

"What is it?" Olivia asks as she shoves her way through to watch the grainy images flickering between the grounds outside, little snaps of each side of the exterior of the university. Peter taps some buttons on a keyboard and the noise cuts off, leaving the same still silence they had just a few minutes before.

"Anything?" he asks as they all stare into the monitors like they might sprout grass. Olivia's head shakes, eyes squinting as she tries to see anything beyond the blacks and grays that appear utterly calm.

Peter massages the tight muscles in his neck, already halfway back to Olivia's room so he can fall face first back into bed.

"There is it," Astrid's voice breaks the silence, pointing a finger to the little moving blurb on the screen. "It's on the East side." The image she points at is that of a man: the shapeshifter is fat, squat and round; barely a blip on the bottommost of the camera footage.

It wanders idly into focus, its foot dragging behind it uselessly and half its face missing as it comes fully into screen. Olivia's stomach tightens as Peter's relaxes, it wasn't the first time they'd had a lost zombie. He bumps his way back into the crowd to look.

"Wait," Astrid says, dropping her eyes to another screen, "there's more."

The screen above shows two more shapeshifters wandering onto the screen. One's following the other as they push their way toward the landscape of Harvard. After them, two more appear, one missing an arm as they scrape along.

"They're traveling together," Astrid murmurs, "how is that possible?" They all look to Walter with the same question-mark face.

"Theoretically, it's not. It must be coincidence." Walter says as his eyes squint against the warbling images on the screen; face brightened by the bright white of the flickering images, looking ghost like in his stillness.

"Can they get in?" Olivia turns to Peter, her voice hushed ike she's afraid that the bodies outside might hear them.

"They don't know what they're looking for." Peter answers though he's barely convincing himself. It's unnerving to watch; bodies who had lives and families and friend all walking along, changed by forces beyond their control making them...this.

"So sad," Astrid says, tuning her uncanny frequency to what they're all not saying.

They're all transfixed by the monitors, allowing it to fill the lab with the glow.

"This is our chance!" Walter exclaims suddenly, catching them all off guard.

"Walter?" Olivia asks a million questions in just his name.

"To capture one," Walter explains as he stalks the lab in his ratty bathrobe and slippered feet, "Peter, we must act quickly."

* * *

><p>Twenty-five minutes later Peter and Olivia are pressed against the Wall of Death, the putrid smell of bodies sticking to the fibers of Olivia's hair; the dog catching pole Astrid handmade from PVC pipe and rope looped under Peter's armpit and they're at the ready in the middle of dead night. Olivia feels little security in the pipe and crowbar they have stashed in the waist of their pants, missing the weight of her gun at her hip.<p>

"Have I ever mentioned how I never liked the purple?" Peter huffs as he tightens the knot turning the rope into a noose. Olivia's almost forgotten that the night was anything other than the violet color. They're both clad in as much black as they owned; crouching low and using the wall as a barrier from the listless bodies wandering the grounds. The shapeshifter with the missing arm has broken off from the others; following the length of the wall they're behind, little tuffs of hair hanging loose against skull as he grinds out his steps.

Peter really wishes he were back in bed, even if it was the small cramped futon that he shared with Olivia. He lets himself drift back to the last few days; the heat of her back against his chest, the cold of her feet against the inside of his calves.

"Did it use to be human?" Olivia peers through the darkness, looking for any sign she might recognize. They all look alike. This one's wearing a denim vest stained a dark tar color probably from however it lost its arm.

"Only one way to find out," Peter says conversationally as he pulls out the army blade from inside the pocket to his coat. He holds the dog pole and the butt end of the knife both out to Olivia.

"Lady's choice."

She deliberates for a moment, hand hovering over her options, finally opting to take the dog rope and leaves the blade to Peter.

"Fair enough," he says as he flips the knife to catch the hilt and Olivia has to suppress the eye roll. He pushes back to sit purposely on his haunches to try to get into a frame of mind of kidnapping a fucking zombie.

"When it gets close enough, I'll swipe you hook." He feels crazy, _this is crazy_, they both know. But with little options, he's not planning on returning to the lab empty handed to do this again.

The night erupts with the pitch of his whistle; two fingers wedged in Peter's mouth and the thing twists its head in their direction, hungry eyes sparking to life as it sees Peter stand from his hiding place. It moves quickly enough that Olivia has to submerge the icy urge to retreat, or to shoot the damn thing, stifling it down and readying the rope and holding her breath as it swings its limbs toward the fresh meat of Peter's face.

"Ready," Peter grinds out to Olivia, the balls of his feet on fire, "on three."

"I'm not trusting any more of your countdowns." Olivia hisses as the shifter's smell catches her; whatever it was, it's been dead for a while. The smell forces itself down her throat and attempts to take her stomach out her mouth.

Peter spares her a sideways smirk, giving her a quick tilt of his head before his arm swoops through the air and into the chest of the body, a flash of red spurting down the already soiled vest. Peter's adrenaline spikes like he just chewed through straight espresso, the knife catching on the denim, the skin underneath giving easily.

"GO!" Peter yells as the body squeals, swiping its single feral arm toward Peter as more blood trickles down its vest. Olivia wrenches the rope around its neck, her body weight back on her heels as she pulls hard despite the angry curl from the one-armed and very pissed off zombie. The PVC pipe slips a little from her grasp as the shifter changes directions, focusing its attention to the person holding the noose around its neck snarling back at them viciously.

Olivia's thankful that Astrid's pipe had enough length on it to keep the shifter's stink far enough away.

Peter makes a little whooping noise at Olivia's success: the euphoric feeling that maybe this would be easier than they thought sparks at his veins and he's delirious. Peter reaches out to help steady the pipe, his other hand stretched around the dagger at the thing's neck, his smile split open from ear to ear.

The wall of stacked bodies is awkward, waist-high and making it infinitely more difficult to leverage than Olivia and Peter had anticipated. The denim-vested zombie suddenly stops thrashing does something neither of them had experience before: opening its mouth letting a loud and feral wail that echoes in the darkness and everything freezes as they watch. It's loud; too loud. The wave of confidence Peter had up until now crackles.

"What was that?" Olivia asks before her boots slips as the shifter propels itself backward, nearly taking her over the wall before Peter's able to fist enough fabric from the front of her jacket to keep her rooted in place.

"You used to be a lot more solid," Peter grunts as he nearly dislocates his arm hauling her backward. He's still got his left hand fixed with the blade, taking little swipes at the shifter when it gets too close; drawing a new screech each time he does.

"And this was supposed to be easy." Olivia shouts back, sweat stinging her eyes as the body continues thrashing against their combined weight. It pulls back again viciously and Peter's distracted by the new body shuffling its way a few yards away and he loses his grip on the pipe.

The distraction is enough for the zombie to gain enough leverage to pull itself back again, Peter's shifted focus to the now three new shifters making their way toward them and his knees hit the barricade before he can catch himself from being wrenched forward, taking the bodies with them as they fall.

Olivia saw they were losing ground, ready enough to cut ties and get the hell back inside the safety of the lab. She didn't noticed the new mass of shifters closing in until too late, riding the tidal wave of decaying bodies down with Peter and she loses her grip on the pole all together when Peter abandons his hold.

She's for a moment disoriented by the fact that she was: one, rolling in decomposing body parts, and two, that when looking up there are at least twenty more shapeshifters appearing over the outskirts of the perimeter that she hadn't noticed before.

"Not good," Peter mutters as he attempts to find solid enough ground to push himself up, fingers digging into the soft flesh on faceless bodies. He'd managed enough to hold tight to the blade as he fell, the crowbar digging painfully into his back but it's all lost to the dizzying terror now cranking in his chest. The zombie they captured now freed and staggering back toward them, the noose and PVC pipe hanging down its front like an outrageously oversized tie.

"Not good," Peter repeats, his voice rising pitch as he grabs Olivia by the scruff of her neck to haul her up too, both slipping and stepping across more bodies that keep tumbling over to put distance between the non-dead bodies that have spotted them.

Their caught shifter gets close enough to reach an arm toward Peter's throat and he's barely able to twist enough to swipe its hand with the blade, causing another howl and the rest of the shifters that hadn't yet notice them do now.

"Fuck!" Olivia shouts, her pipe feeling about as helpful as a popsicle stick and she follows Peter's dead sprint; racing to the entrance of the lab with her blood pounding loudly in her ears as they attempt to outrace the undead.

Peter shimmies the crowbar from his belt and swings it wildly at a shifter with a young girl's face, cracking through skull when it gets too close, crumpling silently under contact and is instantly crushed under the feet from the others trampling over her to get to them.

Olivia makes it to the door first, running so fast that she's pretty sure she would have gone straight through the brick if she hadn't stomped on the brakes at the last minute; prying open the barrier with strength she didn't think she had left. She's a rubber band that's close to snapping, the pounding in her ears a ringing viciously as she screams for Peter to _hurry the hell up_, throwing her shoulder into the heavy wood frame to scrape it another few inches wide. She's halfway into the hallway and waiting with every nerve on fire for Peter.

"Let's go!" She thunders as he takes another backward swing to catch another one in the chest, barely slowing it down before he's back to running. She's filled to the brink with horrible pressure, her head a tight squeeze; focusing on Peter's hard steps as he makes his way back to her, outlined in the violent purple light of night, shapeshifter after shapeshifter clumsily pouring through the breach of the fallen wall.

The poundings so fierce that her vision blots the briefest of moments, the quick flashbulb of a camera that blinds her even as she squeezes them shut to sag against the pallet.

When she can finally open them again she finds Peter red faced as he shouts at her, arms waving madly as he runs at her but she can't hear him over the commotion and the thumping of the rushing blood inside her skull.

"TURN YOUR GODDAMNED HEAD-" she catches but it's too late, she's been so focused on Peter that she's completely forgotten about her surroundings, missing the fat shapeshifter that's barely a foot behind her and she somehow she recognizes it from the camera, its face descending toward her and the shock blooms tightly in her chest.

There's a _pop_ behind her eyes that goes off like a shotgun and her ears roar with the wave of churning pain in her head. and she can barely keep herself upright. She's unable to see anything except the same blinding light over the vicious pull of heat from her chest and the sound of Peter's startled cry mixed with the smell of burnt hair. Something rams hard into her side, pushing her and the she pops again, this time the shock isn't so intense and she lets the pain ripple its way through her; out of her and she blindly hopes it's enough to kill her quickly. She hears another sound but it is worlds away, a faint echo and then everything goes black.


	12. Firestarter

A/N: in response to all those who have been lovely enough to review or PM this story, I'm going to attempt to speed up my once a month spatical updates to once a week. Crazy, I know. So there's going to be some rapid turnaround (fingers crossed) and I hope you're up for the ride :). All feedback welcomed

* * *

><p>Its Peter's panicked voice that brings her back to reality, the shaking of her shoulders that ebbs against the darkness that's engulfed her, but she can't seem to bring herself to open her eyes until she feels the sharp sting against her cheek.<p>

"Olivia!" Peter shouts like she can't hear him, her throbbing head making it difficult for her eyes to focus. Peter's face is split into double; his edges fluttering as she tries to hone in on turning him back into one person. She's still on her feet somehow even though Peter's supporting most of her weight, an arm wrapped tightly around her waist and her face smashed against the crook of his neck. There's a stale lingering stench of burnt flesh trapped in the fibers of his coat and her stomach hiccups.

"You hit me," she says thickly. She feels Peter's hysterical sigh of relief on her cheeks.

She feels like she's just finished being electrocuted, her ears ringing and every neuron on fire. Through blurry eyes she realizes the door and barrier must already be back in place if they're not being torn apart. She doesn't remember how they'd gotten back into the school and the loss of time is sort of freaking her out. Thinking is more painful by the second and soon another tidal wave of pain crashes against the inside of her skull.

"My head," she mumbles, ridiculously trying to wipe away the headache and waiting for Peter to tell her she's been bit and this is the effect of her changing and that the crowbars the next thing she's about to feel. She'd almost welcome being crowbar'd to death if it meant the pounding stopped.

"We need to get you to Walter." Peter's voice is high, shrill and not even trying to hide his panic. He barely had enough time to shove her in the remainder of the threshold to seal them back in against the clawing shapeshifters before he noticed she was about to topple; unsure how to make contact before her knees gave out and he has little choice.

Her arm's magically slung over his shoulders as they barrel their way back toward Walter, Peter carrying most her weight, forcing her feet along. He can feel every painful intake of breath, charged with an undercurrent of unwavering stench of blistered flesh and it's hard to keep his stomach from churning. She sags against him, tripping him up as he rearranges her weight, making them move slower than he wants, tempted to just toss her over his shoulder so he can make a run for it the rest of the way.

"Wait," she mumbles, pushing against him when he doesn't slow down. She says it again louder right before she twists her face away in time to retch into a corner, the sounds reverberating off the walls and pounding into the space. Peter doesn't dare let go, bracing her even as she tries to push him away until the hacking subsides and he's back to dragging again.

He kicks at the door to the lab, his arms too tied up in keeping Olivia upright to beat it the hell off its hinges and is spared the good fortune when Astrid thankfully throws it open, eyes wide and her mouth puckered in her surprise.

"What happened?" she asks as she loops Olivia's other arm around her shoulder to help Peter drag her the rest of the way into the lab. Olivia's giving up all pretenses of being conscious by the time they sling her to the couch that was once Peter's bed.

"No clue," Peter huffs, his chest burning from dragging Olivia's dead weight through the hallway and the process of working through what he just witnessed. He shouts for Walter impatiently, dropping to his knees to palm Olivia's face, seeking a pulse and finding it strong under his fingertips. Astrid ducks out to relock the door they've left open and Walter comes into view with his worn leather medical bag.

"Was she bit?" Astrid's voice is high and ringing.

"No." Peter snarls even though he's not a hundred percent certain himself.

"Move aside son," Walter orders, placing a hand on his shoulder when Peter doesn't budge. "It's fine Peter, she's going to be fine." He says earnestly, buzzing with excitement that irritates and frightens the hell out of Peter. Astrid's back to give a little pull to the crook of his elbow and he begrudgingly lets her pull him away to let Walter move in to inspect Olivia.

"What happened?" Walter asks Peter calmly as they watch Walter lift one eyelid and then the other, flashing his little doctor's light into each pupil. Peter wraps his arms around himself, his arms shaking; mind reeling back to the events that replay themselves against his will.

"Your little science experiment almost got us killed," Peter says through the insane pull of anger lighting at his skin. The stench has carried with them into the lab and suddenly he's tempted to head straight to the contamination showers to try to scrub himself of the image.

Olivia shifts under Walter's touch mumbling, her brow furrowed.

"Astrix, please grab us blanket." Walter says calmly. Astrid looks to Peter before disappearing to retrieve one.

"Not _that," _Walter retorts under his breath, speaking in the conspiracy theory voice Peter recognizes while checking her pulse. "Tell me about the fire." The way Walter says it makes Peter think he's asking to see a rated R movie.

Peter looks hard at his father, searching for some semblance of a rational way to explain what he saw, and blatantly ignoring Astrid's hurried shuffle beside him, tossing the blanket over Olivia. Peter takes a deep breath and swallows, trying to form the words on his tongue.

"One snuck up behind her," he chooses carefully, Walter's withered face looking excitedly back at him, "It burst into flames." He finishes, too drained to try to rationalize anything on her behalf.

"Extraordinary," Walter muses and quite to Peter's annoyance he's up and silently pacing as he mulls Peter's words over.

"Is she going to be okay, Walter?" Peter grates out. Olivia's still slumped over on the couch.

"I'm not seeing any physical signs of distress," Walter says. "What you witnessed was quite miraculous. Olivia's abilities are finally coming through." He continues his pacing fingers pinched together like he's already writing out the unseen formula. Peter's nearing the brink of his meltdown, tired of waiting for Walter to jump off the crazy train.

"Let me get this straight. What I saw, Walter, was Olivia striking that thing up like a match?" he didn't even bother to not sound sarcastic. Walter nods his approval, the imaginary formula summing up nicely even if Peter doesn't understand it.

That nearly does it. Peter pinches the bridge to his nose tightly, blocking Walter out completely. The delirious relief he felt that Olivia was fine is soon crumbled by the fact that he watched her go fire-starter on the shapeshifter; standing two feet away as it split into a fireball of sizzling and popping flesh.

"Peter?" the voice startles him enough to realize it'sOlivia talking and he's back to reality—finding her glassy eyes over the blanket that's covering her up to her chin.

"Yeah, hey." He says, dipping in beside Olivia on the couch. He feels his smile a tight fit on his face, running his hand to smooth the hair away from her forehead. She's warm. Really warm. The smile cracks. Olivia blinks herself more fully awake as Peter peels off the blanket.

"Walter," Peter looks to his father whose face is now pulled into a new set of equations. He huddles close next to Peter and feels her forehead himself.

"She's burning up." Peter whispers as Walter checks her pupils. Olivia squirms in protest, trying to twist her face away from Walter's hands.

"Must be a side effect of her ability," Walter thinks aloud, feeling for her glands on either side of her throat and ignoring Peter's incredulous glare.

"Peter," Olivia says more clearly and Peter nearly topples Walter sideways to move into her field of vision.

"I'm here, it's okay." He says automatically, the hysteria still rising in his chest as Olivia's eyes look a little more lucid.

"What happened?" she asks as she shifts forward, cradling her head in a hand like it might fall off her neck and onto her lap. Peter's eyes dart to Walter for an explanation. Walter's too preoccupied with watching how Olivia reacts.

"What do you remember?" Peter says instead.

Olivia raises her head the rest of the way up, finding the three of them huddled around her on the couch watching her intently and she realizes the same look they share: fear.

"Trying to catch a shapeshifter," she thinks back although her thoughts are murky. "Did we catch one?" she avoids the faces of Walter and Astrid and instead focuses her energy on Peter. He's got his best _everything's okay _face he usually saves for Walter, and then she knows and she's crestfallen.

"Don't worry about it." Peter soothes and asks her how she's feeling instead. It makes her heart thump a little faster in her chest which twists her stomach dangerously close to her throat.

"Like the world's worst hangover." She says as the thudding in her head keeps time with her heart. She pinches her eyes closed and tests out what she remembers: the shapeshifters, being chased back inside, the fat one surprising her. Then nothing until she woke up to the three of them clamoring around her.

"How long do I have?" she asks pointedly to Walter, avoiding their faces by hiding in her hand.

When she finally faces them it's Walter she finds first. He is grave; face pulled tight to a point at his lips like she's speaking Chinese. Peter captures both of her cheeks in his hands and they feel surprisingly cool against her skin.

"You weren't bit," he says sternly, forcing her to see he wasn't lying, "you're not turning into one of _them_." He avoids the word "shapeshifter" but he knows it's what she's thinking. His voice is urgent, but sincere and the monster weight lifts from her chest.

The world spins again as she nods and suddenly the smell on Peter hits her and she has to shove Peter's hands away before she lurches over the side of the couch to heave, sending the rest of them scattering backward out of the spray zone. Luckily she'd emptied most of her stomach earlier in the hallway and she only lurches angrily until her stomach tightens in protest.

"I want to go to bed." She mumbles, horrified and angry they're all still staring at her. Peter looks to Walter who stands unmoving, his lips curled down in a scowl. Olivia doesn't wait for the go ahead, gripping the sides of the couch to haul herself upward. Astrid offers her a steady hand to hang on to as she scrabbles to her feet head still pounding but she fakes her way through it more or less successfully.

"I'll take her," Peter says over Astrid's shoulder as he takes Olivia's forearm to help guide her through the lab. He wasn't waiting around for Walter to throw out more ridiculous theories around "powers" and "Cortexiphan," at least not in front of Olivia anyway. He's delirious at this point, the adrenalin from an hour ago already running its course and he's already trying to come up with all the reasons it's not possible for Olivia to have set shit on fire with her mind.

"You don't have to," Olivia says to him, but she doesn't quite know how to finish the thought so she doesn't, instead she hunches over to keep the pounding minimal. Peter just shrugs, opening the door to her office and closing it tight behind them. She doesn't want to talk about anything. She just wants to sleep.

"You have anything else to change into?" Peter asks after he moves her to the futon. He turns to dig through a dresser, pulling out the first t-shirt he finds. When he faces her again she's already curled up on the bed, eyes shut and chest rising softly.

He takes a moment to replay the events of the evening; letting the shock flicker before he shoves it deep into the corner of his mind. He doesn't care what happened, he decides, she's alive and not carving the flesh off his face so he isn't going to worry about much else.

He works her arms around to peel the disgusting coat off and tosses it into a corner, followed by her shirt and pants, guiding her limp limbs through the fabric of the shirt and finally arranging her on the bed that allows him to fit too. He peels off his own clothes until he's down to just his boxers, bundling their rancid clothes together and kicks them into a corner. He knows he won't be sleeping much that night but he settles in anyway, feeling her fevered body and pulls her close to him. He bunches the pillow behind his head and lays back to watch her, feeling her forehead every so often to inspect the heat that burns the pads of his fingers.

The fever breaks a few hours after it starts, her rosy cheeks finally feeling halfway normal and he's finally able to relax enough to close his eyes.


	13. The Knitter

A/N: Whew, made it!

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><p>Peter's awake the next morning before Olivia is, neck aching from falling asleep upright and frozen stiff from laying in nothing but his boxers while Olivia cocooned herself in the blankets. He reaches out to touch Olivia's forehead, finding it just as cool as it was the last fifteen times he checked. He drops his hand to press two fingers to the carotid artery in Olivia's neck and relaxes a bit when it's as strong as always. He expects her to look different somehow; like smoke should be hissing from her ears or singed hair; anything to prove that she somehow conjured up a massive fireball like the one he witnessed the night before. But she's as normal looking as ever—aside from being able to sleep peacefully for once.<p>

He swings his legs over the side of the bed, grimacing when his bare feet touch cold tile and he stalks to her dresser to rummage for the chance of clothing. Praising whatever mystical elements that bestowed Olivia as the one woman with the foresight to own practical mannish socks, he pulls out the basic cotton and shoves his feet in them despite their smaller size. He refuses though to don the same clothes from the night before as he quietly exits Olivia's office in search of suitable clothing.

He stops with a start and a curse when he finds Astrid sitting on the worn leather couch that used to be his bed, somehow magically pushed to face the direction of Olivia's office. She casually ignores his entrance; instead focused on the large silver needles between her fingers that she's working through a section of about three square inches.

"Morning," she says sweetly, eyeing him smugly over the nimble fingers as she threads yarn expertly into something that looks like a small napkin. She smirks as her eyes drop from the dark plaid of his boxers to the pair of white socks he's wearing and Peter's face burst with the awkward heat of embarrassment.

"Sleep well?" she continues when he stares dumbly at her.

Peter can't help but think she was waiting for him to emerge, ignoring her implications and shuffling quickly by to trudge to the broom closet where he keeps most of his meager processions of clothing, stuffing himself into whatever pants he can lay his hands on first.

"How's our little Drew Barrymore?" Astrid calls over the back of the couch as Peter shoves a shirt over his head before making his way back to where she sits on the couch.

"Sleeping it off," Peter says as he inspects whatever it is that Astrid's doing. "You knit?" he comments, slightly amused at learning Astrid's hidden talent.

Astrid makes a clucking sound with her tongue, holding up her results for him to inspect.

"Of course I do," she says as Peter prods a finger into the fibers of the material. Peter gives her a look of approval at the little scrap of material. "How else are you going to get a new blanket?"

Peter's mouth gapes as an unexpected wash of affection toward Astrid warms the moment, smothering it down quickly before she sees it on his face.

"Not exactly the most hip of trades," he teases as turns the switch on a burner to start some tea as a distraction.

He hears Astrid's little gasp of feigned indignation, twisting to face him behind the couch. "Knitting has _always _been hip," she charges. "And it'll be my biggest contribution to rebuilding society after the zombie apocalypse." Her little outburst makes Peter drop the Erlenmeyer flask he's holding as the laugh he didn't realize he was still capable of shakes his shoulders. It's over as quickly as it starts though, the fleeting feeling foreign on his skin. He focuses intently on the bright blue flames from the burner as they spring to life.

"You contribute far more than you can imagine," he says very seriously, almost too low for Astrid to hear. She looks genuinely shocked, giving Peter a little quirked lip before breaking eye contact and settling back to continue her knitting.

Peter lets the grin rest on his face when he figures it's safe enough to scrounge for something to eat.

"It'll take a while, you know." Astrid says casually as he finds what's left of some abandoned crackers.

"What's that?" he says between stale mouthfuls.

"The blanket. It'll take a while to finish."

"Oh?" Peter remarks as he stares at the back of her curly head, trying to figure out what she's talking about. He pops another cracker in his mouth as he pads closer.

"So you won't be able to get back to the couch any time soon." She says apologetically, but Peter can see from her face that's she not sorry at all. Her eyes flash for a wicked moment and he doesn't know exactly how to retort. He chokes on a cracker instead.

At that moment they're both distracted as Olivia's door opens and she steps stiffly into the lab looking like she was on the losing end of a bar fight the night before. Peter feels the cool swoosh of apprehension as he takes her in, marveling that she was able to dress herself at all. She looks like a deflated balloon, one that's been shot and then run over several times by a steam roller.

She sags a little against the doorframe and Peter and Astrid both make identical moves toward her.

"Olivia," Astrid says, already abandoning her pet project and beating Peter to where Olivia's standing. Peter knows better to ask what she's doing out of bed—he recognizes the look she has too well and knows it'll be useless to try to tell her to take the day off, but damned if he's not going to try.

"You look like hell." Astrid says, cautiously approaching Olivia who's now emanating a very threatening scowl at anyone who might be foolish enough to try and touch her.

"I feel great," Olivia retorts as she takes another step into the lab, her back pulled straight by some invisible string. Peter's fingers itch waiting for her to keel over sideways.

"Where do you think you're going?" Peter says evenly, taking a subtle step in the direction she wants to take even though there's ten feet between him and the door. Astrid's eyes flicker between them, unsure where best to move to avoid the fallout that they both know is coming.

Olivia looks positively grey in the face and a little piece of Peter wonders if she wasn't actually bit and the fire was just his mind not so subtly going crazy.

"I thought we had a shapeshifter to catch." Olivia remarks, her stiff legs carrying her over to the lab counter closest to Peter to lean some her weight on. She doesn't hide it well from Peter, who's having a hard time saying rooted. He shifts gears.

"And I thought you'd want some more time to recuperate," he chooses wisely, his face disarmingly friendly when Olivia shoots him an electric glare he's expecting. He pulls a packet of tea out of the box on the counter and an old ceramic mug with "_Life's a Beach"_ on the side.

"Tea?" he says pleasantly, cutting off whatever she had planned and is already pouring hot water into the mug, the steam rippling up as the smell of spiced cinnamon wafts.

Olivia's sigh is pulled deep from her chest, but she doesn't loosen from her white-gripped handle on the laminate counter. Her eyes are wary, but Peter see's his chance.

"Astrid? Tea?" he ignores Olivia's furrowed brow, turning instead to Astrid who's trying her best to be ignored as the events unfold around her.

"Sure." She answers a little uncertainly, eyes wide as she walks around Olivia to the proffered mug, her eyebrow arching and telling Peter silently _I hope you know what you're doing._

"Olivia?" Peter's already pouring a mug for her.

"I know what you're doing," Olivia says, her voice a little stronger, a little less hoarse. Peter stops mid pour to put on his best _What? _face.

"I'm making tea," he says evenly. "We're out of coffee," and Olivia pushes off the counter with a smack.

"Peter,_ I'm fine_." Olivia grinds as she takes a step closer to Peter. Peter takes an involuntary step back. Olivia's changes from annoyance to surprise as she notices.

"What happened last night?" she finally asks.

Peter and Astrid share a furtive look; the muscle in Peter's jaw jumping and she knows they're keeping something from her. She looks to Astrid.

"What don't I know?" Olivia holds strong to Astrid's face, trying to block her view of whatever Peter's trying to communicate over her shoulder.

Astrid for her part keeps a surprisingly even poker face, eyes flickering to Peter once before answering.

"You don't remember?"

Olivia opens her mouth to answer _of course I do, _but the harder she thinks back the more she realizes she doesn't.

"I remember the shifter," she starts, her head suddenly pounding as the gaps in her memory expand, "and then there were lots of them." She looks back to Peter with wild eyes to fill in the rest when Astrid doesn't move.

"What?" Olivia says, her voice raising. She looks around for Walter but Peter answers.

"You remember the fire?"

"Fire?" Olivia's thrown back a bit, and what was once the pleasant smell of cinnamon is now replaced with the tangy smell of burnt flesh. She's not sure how she missed it till now.

There are quick glimpses of her standing in the doorway leading into Harvard, followed by the fat zombie and a force that knocked the wind out of her. Then she woke up today. None of her memory included fire.

"Where's Walter?" Olivia asks, ignoring the unnerving face Peter was giving her to stalk around the lab. Astrid circles around her, looking ready to tackle her if Peter gives the word.

"He's still asleep," Astrid says, blocking Olivia's route to his door. "He took a sedative; he'll be out for hours." Olivia stops and rubs an irritated finger against her eyelid.

"We promised him a shifter." Olivia says as she makes her way to the door. Peter almost cracks the mug he's holding between his fingers. Peter takes two quick steps to block her; a hand on her arm to grab onto that she instantly shakes off.

"Walter will understand." Peter retorts in exasperation. When that didn't slow her down, he bites the inside of his cheek and tries again.

"You set one of fire. Last night." Peter shouts as she passes him. That catches her attention. She turns slowly to face Peter, and he knows she can see it in his face that he's not bullshitting her. She doesn't look like she believes him though.

"I set a shapeshifter on fire? How?" Olivia demands, hands on her hips and looking expectantly from Peter to Astrid. They either don't know or aren't sharing if they're telling the truth. Astrid's face is openly worried. Peter's is pissed.

Olivia's anger makes her feel a lot more alert, fuelling her limbs into moving to the door. "Astrid, can you make another roper from last night?"

Astrid swallows. "Yes."

"You can take a day off." Peter makes one last appeal. "The zombies will be there tomorrow, I promise."

Olivia's face is flushed as she meets Peter's gaze head on. Astrid is already gone; off making another dog roper form whatever supplies she can come up with.

"We're almost out of food. There's a chance that Walter can fix this; that's what you said, right? Isn't that worth it? To have a game plan? To have some hope?" Olivia's face is set as Peter reels to find another argument.

"There are no days off in an apocalypse," Olivia says. "The sooner we do this the sooner we can get to Massive Dynamic."

Peter crosses his arms over his chest and leans back against the counter, sick of her stubbornness and angry he can't protect her from even herself. But he knows her well enough to know there's no talking her out of something when her decision is set.

"You don't have to go with me," Olivia says through grit teeth. "I can go by myself."

That seals it.

They're going to catch themselves a zombie.


	14. Tree

a/n: thanks to Doc for being a slave driver to get this thing out on time :)

* * *

><p>They hunker down together, shoulder to shoulder eight miles from the Harvard grounds as they watch the group of shapeshifters shuffle through the path they've just vacated, barely breathing and stone still. There's about eight of the shapeshifters traveling together, mismatched in ages but all with the same drooping dead eyes and bloodied clothing. As many times as she's seen them, the disjointed way their bodies move unnerve her more than their rotting faces.<p>

Olivia can see the gears grinding to a stop in Peter's mind, watching him watch them with a thinly veiled look of surprise and horror.

"What?" she whispers beside him, the anticipation rattling her. He faces her then, eyes wide as he works through whatever he wants to say. He looks like the giddy thirteen year old she imagines he once looked like.

"They _are _traveling together," he murmurs almost to himself, eyes shifting from her face to the feet of the dead shapeshifters, his face alight with discovery so palpable she finds it hard not to feel his excitement, even if she doesn't understand it. Her face must spell her confusion, because he scoots a little closer, pointing through the brush line from where they're hiding, one hand gripping her thigh and tilting his chin close to her cheek and she has to suppress the grin that's threatening to break.

"See, look how they're grouping together," he says excitedly, "Walter was wrong; they're not nomadic beings. They're instinctive—_traveling as a pack. _Just like last night._" _

Olivia feels the frown start as she realizes what he says. "They're what? Migrating? They're like birds?" she asks incredulously. Peter's face is wistful, like they're not talking about zombies. He looks exactly like Walter when he gets nostalgic and that's a little too weird for her to handle.

"This isn't good news." She concludes after a moment, seeing the plan set out for them become exponentially more difficult.

"No, no it's not." He agrees as he taps her shoulder to get her to move as they backtrack through the field when the pack disappears beyond the tree line. He's lost in thought, the new pipe Astrid made laying where he left it; scanning where the pack disappeared and feeling Olivia's eyes along his back.

"You don't think we'll actually catch one, do you?" she says and can already see she's right from the way his back ripples as he tenses.

"We'll get one." Peter replies casually, already sweeping by her to start back down the path.

"But you don't think it'll do any good then, is that right?" she feels the little threads start to weave together as she focuses her thoughts out loud.

"It _won'_t do any good." He emphasizes, continuing to put space between them.

"But before you said—" she tries as she jogs behind him to catch up with his purposeful strides.

"— I know what I said." He snaps and she stops.

"This changes everything, doesn't it?" she asks.

He stops too, eyes refusing to find hers. Debates lying.

"Yes." He answers simply.

"So what do we do?" she says then, ready for the next step they can take. Peter's look is hard and firm set. It makes her stomach fall. There is no next step.

"Nothing," he says already pushing past her back toward Harvard, "it means everything we've learned up until this point has been useless. It's over."

"So," she says heatedly, "that's it?" she's reeling with disbelief.

"Congratulations, you were right. There is no surviving this." He answers gravely, his mood blackening the entire area surrounding them. She can almost see the ripples of his temper pulsing off him in hot waves. She's off and after him in a heartbeat, stopping him with two hands pushing firmly against his chest.

"You're not planning on taking Walter to Massive Dynamic." He doesn't correct her. Her hands burn through the fibers of his coat and he wishes that he could offer her some sort of hope, something to hang tight to, but there's nothing left. He pictures the fat shapeshifter closing in on her from last night before her explosion; why he was so much more terrified than before at the dumpsters.

"It's the apocalypse," he reminds her gently, throwing her words back at her but not pulling away, "there is no way to survive this." He finally does shake loose of her hands and continues on his way, feeling the little scorch marks on his shirt.

"Where is this coming from?" she asks suddenly, eyebrows pulled together. His sigh high and dejected.

"We're not going, Olivia. I'm not taking him out into this." He says calmly, arms wide into the expanse of what used to be Boston to better emphasize his point. "How many close calls do we have to have to realize we're nowhere closer than we were before?"

She knows he's talking about her, and it vibrates deep in her skin.

"This is about last night?" Olivia shouts as she meets his long strides," why don't you come out and say it already and not hide behind this _protecting Walter _bullshit." she snarls. When he doesn't retort, she feels it. She knows it's because of her. Peter's chin presses against his chest.

"What if the fire hadn't happened?" he asks as he turns to her, eyes a clear and angry blue. Olivia's mouth opens to argue but he cuts her off.

"_It did happen_," he challenges her, "whatever inexplicable or fucked up or utterly ridiculous reason why it happened, rest assured it did happen. I watched you set that thing on fire." His hands are wild; punctuating his words with angry gestures. "And as terrifying as the idea of you being capable of reducing one of them to ash with your mind, it doesn't compare to if it you hadn't."

Peter takes a step forward, red faced and bursting at the seams. Olivia doesn't move, refusing to hear what he's really trying to tell her. She's not a liability, _goddamn it_; she doesn't need to be protected.

"But Walter said—" she pushes, taking steps toward him. She feels like a broken record, asking the same questions she already knows the answers to.

"Walter's barely lucid half the time," Peter's voice is thunderous, rising higher with each passing moment. "You think he's going to be able to make a two week trip to New York? On foot?"

Olivia balks.

"How do we know Massive Dynamic survived this at all?" Peter asks angrily and she does finally step back.

It was never a question. She'd never even thought of them not surviving. She feels the cold push in on her on all sides, slicing through her jacket and biting at her skin. She feels herself spinning out of control; hot burning heat bubbling up her chest and suddenly she's blinking back angry tears as he walks away.

"You asshole!"

The words blurt out suddenly and with such force they stop him dead in his tracks. He turns slowly to face her again, eyes wide in his shock, eyebrows sky-high.

"What?" he asks disbelieving, taking in her reddened cheeks and fluttering eyes.

"Are you _crying?" _he asks terrified, his tone is verging on disbelief. He's seen her go up against a band of Resisters, pipe a zombie in the brain and light a motherfucking shifter on fire with her mind, but he's never seen her cry. Not as completely unguarded as she is now. She might as well have been tap dancing.

He resists the urge to step away when she barrels toward him, shaking the earth as she stomps to the place he's frozen to.

"You asshole!" she shouts again, laying both hands flat on his chest to shove him hard. "You gave me hope again. Made me believe we could survive this, could _fix this!" _the anger stings and he stumbles backward, utterly shocked by her outburst.

"Olivia, there is no fixing this," he shouts back, shackling her wrists with his hands as she continues to shove at him, "there is no hope." The words sound foreign in his mouth, but he shouts them anyway, feeling an odd relief of finally letting go of hope. It's an odd rush, giving up, and he's glad he finally says them out loud.

"Why does this change anything? Because we see one group of them and you're suddenly giving up?" She's wrenched free of his hands to pace back and forth on the path, raking her hands through the hair that's come loose from her ponytail. Peter stands frozen, his black hole deepening at the sight of her coming unhinged. His hands stay in front of him, ready for her to charge and tackle him. His eyes search around them wildly, looking for any signs of danger as his partner comes apart.

"Because everything we thought we knew about them is wrong—I was wrong. It's over." His voice is lowered, approaching her like a frightened animal, knowing she can be much more dangerous than she lets on. She swivels and he doesn't see the wild swing of her right hook, but _goddamned _does he feel it whenit connects with his jaw. He staggers backward before leaping forward, floored on instinct and grabbing her in engulfing big bear hug to keep her from taking another swing or setting him in fire.

He holds tight, her anger sagging against him, the wet choking sounds lost against his chest but he won't pull away because he can still feel her fury radiating in every direction and he has a strong desire to live. He wants to say something scathing, something to make up for the stinging jaw, but he can't bring himself to do anything but hold her.

There's a gurgling in the distance and the sound of footsteps crunching against the dry ground and he freezes, squeezing her tight and waiting to hear it again. She's about to say something but he cuts her off with a curt noise in his throat and her eyes widen when she hears it too.

"Fuck," Peter mutters against her temple, trying to strain his hearing over the sounds of her labored breathing. His heart flutters wildly in his chest as he tries to discern dangerous sounds from normal ones. There's more dry creaking and it's definitely from their left, so he grabs her arm and drags her to the right, not giving a damn if she's over her temper tantrum or not.

He pulls her down into the bushes with him, feeling her stiffen as he drops beside her, wrapping an arm over her back to keep her still. She probably still wants to murder him, but she's smart enough not to try it right then.

"Where is it?" her voice is husky and thick, but he doesn't need to answer when they both see the shifter break through the horizon and stumble into view. It's a female, this one, and has been turned for a while from the looks of it: the place where her nose should be is just an empty hole on its dead face, the whites of teeth poking through where her lips are missing. She's mostly naked, the filthy remnants of a pair of pants still around her waist and the rotting parts of her skin flaking away and hanging loosely off her shoulders.

It looks around blindly, cloudy eyed and mouth snapping as it drags itself along suctioning air in through the cavity of its nose and Peter's stomach lurches as she twists her head in their location. He hears Olivia's breathing pick up beside him.

"Get ready," Peter says softly; ready to yank her up with him. She's coiled against him. Ready.

"We can get it," she argues.

They don't get an inch off the ground before a gunshot rings out and the shifter's head explodes in front of them, dropping forward and splattering the ground in blood. Olivia pulls back, trying even minutely to distance herself from it—from the thought that this one used to be human.

"Gotcha!" coos the boisterous voice through the distance, the strong baritone of a man in his fifties. He comes out of hiding, the shotgun cocked over one shoulder as he struts to the mutilated corpse of his kill, the smoke twisting out of the gun he's holding. His belly hangs precariously over the belt of his camouflaged pants as he bends over to kick at the shifter with a foot to twist it face up.

Olivia's back is shaking from being so rigid, she's given herself a migraine from the anger she felt not moments ago. She wants to be back at the lab, back at home, anywhere except for here.

"Still think we should run?" she whispers as the man drops to go through the pockets of the woman, feeling Peter's disgust at what they've witnessed. He shakes his head, his lips on his chin low as he grimaces. His breathing stops when the man stands, looking in their direction through the barrel of his gun.

"Shiiiiiiiitt," Peter hisses, the crunching louder as the man's feet carries him closer to where they're hiding and Peter knows for sure that they're sighted.

"Come out, come out wherever you are." The man's singsong voice is sinister and frightening; the little hairs on Olivia's neck tingling. The gun swings at them, settling in on where they're hiding. Peter's got a tight grip on Olivia, digging his nails in painfully like he's trying to press her through the dry dirt of the ground but she doesn't make a sound.

Peter looks around for a sturdy weapon, not daring to try to pull the crowbar from his belt. He spots the thick line of the dead tree branch that's within arm's distance and weighs whether to make a grab at it or stay stationed where they're at. He doesn't get further than that before the end of the gun is pointed down on them and the sound of the man's dark chuckling fills the dense air.

"Come on out, beautiful," the man says through dead teeth, as the branches are parted with the barrel of the gun of the bush they're behind. Peter's hand clamps down on her wrist letting her know silently she's not going anywhere. The gun's cocked and pointed; the yellowed smile growing as Olivia stares down the barrel to the bloated face of the bearded man.

When she still doesn't move he tacks on impatiently, "that wasn't a request."

Peter's skin crawls, pushing himself to stand but the man's gun swings to him to stop.

"Not you. _Her." _

"I don't think so." Peter spits back but Olivia's already rising beside him despite the nasty glare he's giving her to stay put. He knows that Olivia won't listen to him, not even now. The gun's pointed away from his chest back to hers as she stands and Peter's eyes narrow on the quirked line of the man's face and his hands shake in anger.

"That's a good girl." The bearded man laughs and something cracks in the air around them.

The temper rages inside Peter and he reacts more so on pure instinct than sense, flying out to grab the branch and has it swinging before the gun has a chance to take aim, knocking it sideways and a shot fires blindly to their right. The man's voice is loud in surprise as the gun clatters out of his hands and he takes a step toward Peter. Another heavy swing and Peter connects with his face, the sickening thud ripping through the silence as the man drops to his knees before stumbling forward into the brush at their feet.

Peter's arms stiffen when he realizes what he's done, holding the bloodied branch limply in his left hand. Olivia's beside him, grabbing his arm to move it as he stares dumbly at the man dead at their feet.

"Run!" she orders, dragging him with her, waiting for more of them to pop out from all sides. Peter's shocked face stares at her so she takes a fist full of his collar with her as she runs. The branch falls silently beside the body and he's able to work his legs enough to follow, tripping as they sprint away from the blood that's slowly running through the dirt. The scenery goes by in a blur as they run, Olivia never letting go of Peter's collar as they run like holy hell as far away as quickly as possible.

The only thing Peter can concentrate on is the way Olivia's hair billows out behind her as she runs, the sickening fury he felt watching the gun pointed at her and the unrelenting desire to go back and continue to beat the lifeless body of the man where he lay.

After a stretch of blinding moments they scatter to a stop, far enough to hope they're not followed; but further away from the safety of Harvard.

"I killed him," he heaves through wet breaths that wrack his chest. He looks up and Olivia's leaning against a tree, her face red; bright. "I didn't mean to, I thought..." he attempts to explain but he's feeling dangerously lightheaded. Her pink face sparks something in his chest and he throws caution to the wind and hopes that she won't take another swing at him. It's twice now that he's almost lost her and he's sick of it.

He stomps over to Olivia and clasps her face in his hands, crushing her face against his before she has a chance to say something that might stop him. Her lips are frozen for a startled second before opening and matching his frenzy.

"I don't want you to die in this," he admits against her lips, but it sounds more like a plea when he pulls back enough to talk. The force of the kiss startles her; it's fevered, charged and infinitely angry. She feels his hot breath against her mouth as he continues to try to talk and she waits wide eyed and breathless waits for him to continue.

His forehead dips against hers and for a moment it's their shared, labored breathing that fills the soundlessness of the air around them, Peter's actions shocking him but not enough to release her from the safety of his clammy palms. Olivia deliberates for a moment, searching his eyes for something he can't place before reaching up with her chin to place her mouth back on his and the world burns around them.

His lips match his desperation, filling her with his euphoria as he clings to her like she's the last breath of air on earth. She scrambles to meet his fervor, raking hands over his back as he pins her to the bark of the tree as he tries to cover as much her body with his as possible. She can feel him spiraling out of control , lets him dig his fingers into her to prove she's still there, that she's still alive because she knows it's important to him right then.

"I'm not going to die," she says breathlessly as he sucks hard on her neck, a sharp pain as he bites and she pulls him closer in response. "I'm not going to die. We're not going to die." She amends and repeats those words like if she stops he will too. And she doesn't want him to stop. It's not long before she's struggling to get his jacket zipped free so she can touch him, feeling the wave of relief as he pulls back to let her.

He's practically growling as he paws through the fabric of her jacket and shirt, his hands gliding, scratching, digging into her skin. He's high on endorphins, spinning wildly and blood pumping like cannons through his veins as he spreads his fingers over the skin of her stomach, slipping under the fabric of the bra that earns him a low, throaty sound and a charged kiss in retaliation when he molds his hands to the expanse of her breasts.

Before, in the bunker, he was all questions and tentative kisses; here he's angry, aggressive and bold—and fuck did it turn her on. She's minutely aware she should be concerned for him, checking him for shock, knowing that he's probably not in his right mind at the moment. But the moment his head lowered and his mouth found the spot on her neck with his tongue all thoughts halted and she could barely contain herself from the explosion she's sure is imminent.

Peter's not sure exactly what's fueling him at this point, the heavy dead-set feeling of almost losing her twice within hours draws from him a violent, heated reaction that makes him want to claw open her skin and lose himself in her entirely. He tastes her, drinks her in, seeking from her what he couldn't ask for before, encouraged by the way her breathing is high and unsteady, feeling her fingers on his belt, working through the front of his jeans and he finally finds her mouth again.

His actions aren't graceful, but nothing about them could ever really be described as such. His jeans are pushed down to his knees before his hands skim over the fevered swell of her hips to help shimmy her out of her own. He's got manic hands and shaking fingers, bracing her against the tree as they twist and squirm to put him in the right place, Olivia gripping his shoulders to let Peter hitch her leg around his hip, feeling him grip her thigh too hard, his other hand crushing her face to his. She makes the mistake of looking at him then, his eyes a clear and undiluted blue and looking at her so intently that she wants to look away, but his eyes roll back then when she feels him push inside her and it's like the light of the universe switches off.

Olivia doesn't realize how close she already is until he pulls back and rocks into her again, his face dropping to the crook of her neck and the difference in sensation is shocking her into awareness of his every thrust: this isn't stress relief, or casual _we might die_ sex, but something different; volatile and powerful—and that possibility scares her. He's got her hair fisted tightly in one hand, the other pulling her knee higher up his back and she knows he's close; the sounds escaping from his mouth are low, furtive; possessive. He chokes on her name, sandwiches it between invectives that shouldn't be such a turn on, but every drawl and every push of his hips puts her closer to the edge. The dead bark is scraping the tender exposed skin of her back, but it's lost under the haze of his teeth skimming the line of her jaw and she's so close that she clasping him tightly to her, holding on for dear life as the white light overtakes her.

Peter feels her go rigid, clutching him, and he lets himself follow, throwing himself into the sensation of her, the hiss silent against his neck as she comes, and it's the tipping point he needs to be blinded by the waves of pleasure, words rolling off his tongue and into her skin, branding her as he lets it beat through his chest, trying to cling to the feeling for as long as possible before it ends.

They're left with the same heavy breathing, his forehead tucked against her throat as he tries to come back to himself, letting her hands draw firm circles in his back, soothing him as he gasps for air. When he can finally feel his toes again he pulls back to look at her, his eyes heavy but alert, a grin creeping to pull up the corners of his mouth as he steals another kiss before she's coherent enough to notice.

"Thank you," Peter mumbles against the slope of her chin, sensing her confusion as she fights for feeling again.

"For what?" she asks.

"Not setting me on fire."


	15. The Fallout

This is will be the last rated T chapter (which is probably way overdue), so next Monday you'll be able to find this story nestled in the rest of M rated fics. Thanks again to Zombie Sniper for the quick and fabulous work as always. And thank you again to everyone reading/reviewing. Feedback always welcomed.

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><p>Apparently getting laid does little to lighten Peter's black mood. He and Olivia drag the mostly headless corpse back to Harvard, but not before Peter pries the shotgun from the Resister that still lies dead in the brush where they left him. Peter's face is dark, eyes zigzagging every time they hear something suspicious: a gust of wind through the tree line, the snap of every twig.<p>

Olivia doesn't try to talk to him. She just takes a hand of the shapeshifter and tows, sloughing more skin off the body as they scrape it over concrete and rocks, leaving a red trail behind them as they walk. Which she thinks is a bad idea if anyone should try to track them. She doesn't ask why they're bringing the body back with them; it's useless to Walter, but she suspects he's doing it more to prove a point than to be helpful. And she gets all that.

What she doesn't get is that he very consciously refuses to look at her now after the roaring declarations he shared not a half hour ago when he fucked her and admitted things she's now sure he didn't mean. So she just walks along side him, dragging the surprisingly heavy shapeshifter to Walter knowing it won't do any good and waiting for Peter to say _something._ But if the way his jaw is set is any indication, she guesses he won't.

They don't tell Walter or Astrid about the Resister. They don't tell Walter anything at all in fact, instead dragging the dead shapeshifter through the halls of Harvard and down the stairs to it drop at Walter's feet in the lab. Peter's already stomping off into the direction of the monitors before Walter realizes that Astrid has let them in.

Walter's got Edith Piaf crooning on his old record player, muffled by the wail of the siren that should have altered Walter that they're back. Peter pounds the sequence into the keyboard with angry jabs that cut the blaring sirens. The lab is once again filled with soft music and husky memories of better days that don't match the heated intensity that Peter's radiating as he goes.

"We're not doing this again," Peter shouts to everyone as his temper amplifies his voice as he washes his bloodied hands in the sink that he hopes are from the zombie.

Walter looks up expectantly at Olivia, his eyes squinting as he looks to the remains that are discarded before him. He's already clad in black rubber gloves as he digs around the rotting innards of some left over lower intestine if Olivia's guessed correctly. Peter's back to his angry gait toward Olivia's office before she has a chance to take off her coat.

Olivia's door slamming shut vibrates the whole lab, causing the needle on the record to scratch to a stop. Walter's look of consternation is heavily muted by the jittery line of his lip as it dances on his face as he finally realizes that apprehension that litters the air like fog.

"It's dead," Walter says as he toes the body, forgetting he's holding a coil of guts.

"It's dead." Olivia agrees humorlessly. She's got her arms tucked so tightly around her chest that she feels the fabric stretched tight over her skin. She smells Peter clinging stubbornly in every pore of her body; taking a step back from Walter in case he could smell it too. Walter looks from her to the dead shapeshifter, finally settling on the door in which Peter just sequestered himself.

"Peter's upset." Walter hypothesizes to the door.

Olivia nods, sucking in the pink of her lips before answering. "Yeah. He is." She says as Walter wipes the bloody entrails on the plastic apron he's wearing, before leaning over to inspect the shifter, smearing more blood on the shapeshifter with a very sizable hole in its skull.

"It's been shot." Walter says, looking up to Olivia with angry eyebrows. "You shot it." He accuses. Olivia barely registers the indignation in his voice that Walter's become fluent in. She doesn't really give a damn about what state the shapeshifter is in. Walter examines the wound with a probing finger like someone's spilt wine on his new carpet.

"I thought you lost your gun, where did you get a new one?" he looks up suddenly at Olivia. The look on her face keeps him from pressing the issue further. Then he remembers something important.

"I think I might have a preliminary antidote." Walter says excitedly as he holds up a vial that's filled with a bright crimson substance, letting it settle in the light. Olivia suddenly forgets about being pissed off and stares dumbly at the vial pressed in Walter's hand.

"What?" Olivia nearly chokes.

"Of course, now I can't test it on our friend here," he looks directly at the useless shapeshifter that Olivia and Peter almost died twice to acquire. He sets the vial back into the centrifuge carefully, leaving little bloodied prints on it from his gloves.

"How?" Olivia manages; her rigid posture loosening as she suddenly feels lightheaded. Astrid's in the background, gathering up the pieces of intestines that Walter's already forgotten about with a sour face.

"I don't understand." Olivia probes when Walter gets distracted with Astrid taking away the bloody bowels.

Walter turns around dramatically, forefinger skyward like a rocket. "Rabies!" he says excitedly.

Olivia's posture tenses again.

"Rabies." Olivia repeats. Her mood takes a dangerous curve downward to match Peter's.

"Not exactly," Astrid answers for Walter's lack of explanation, slopping the innards into a large silver bowl.

"Then _what exactly_?" Olivia says, waiting impatiently for Walter to answer.

Walter clasps his bloody gloved hands together to illustrate whatever he's trying to describe. "We've established that this is a viral disease, transmitted through infected shapeshifters to humans." Walter explains as he strips himself of the gloves, "by extracting the immunoglobulin from our shapeshifter friends here…"

Olivia's blank reaction alerts Walter that he's lost her again.

"Zombie antibodies." Astrid fills in helpfully.

"You've made a cure?" Olivia asks incredulously, wanting desperately to take the overwhelming excitement and shove it down Peter's throat.

Walter's face deflates, his shoulders slumping over and the excitement pops and gives way to the dread from before. _Maybe not, _she amends.

"Unfortunately no," Walter says, "it's only in its infancy; I can't process it here. At best it might slow the process, but not reverse it."

And like that, Olivia's last straw breaks.

"Is that the only one you have?" Olivia asks because she sort of wants to throw the little vial against the wall.

Walter gives her a frightened look, and nods.

"How did I start the fire?" she slices and Walter's distracted from the sudden one-eighty. There's the heavy silence that Olivia recognizes in Peter when he's dead set on not answering, at least not truthfully.

"I'll get back to Peter's blanket." Olivia hears Astrid say as she leaves them alone together. She had almost forgotten that Astrid was still there. Walter looks much older when he talks about something unpleasant, each wrinkle finely engraved in his skin. He shuffles out of his plastic apron, tossing it with the gloves lie forgotten on the counter.

"What do you remember about Jacksonville?" Walter finally says, looking Olivia in the eye for the first time that day.

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><p>Peter's tired. His limbs hang like boulders off his body as he lays face down on the uncomfortable mattress of Olivia's bed. Everything's sore. Every square inch of him that's touching the unforgiving fabric aches. He misses his bed in Iraq. Even the hotel they were first shelled up in is better than the futon he now finds himself sharing. It's dark in the room where he's flopped himself.<p>

He's stripped down to his boxers, the distinctive smell of Olivia permeating the sheets and it stirs something in his stomach that might be comfort. If it weren't also so damn uncomfortable. It takes Olivia hours before she enters the little office; obviously finished talking through with Walter whatever it is that triggers her to strike up fire like she was made of motherfucking kindling.

He doesn't really care about reasons, though. And he certainly isn't looking forward to talking about it. He just wishes they had something harder to drink than vodka and cough syrup so he can block the wet thud of dry tree limbs cracking against skulls. He doesn't think he'll ever sleep again.

She doesn't say anything when she finally enters; just strips down in silence and partial darkness to join him on the bed, careful to not jostle him.

"I'm not asleep," he mumbles through the covers his face is smothered against.

"I know," she whispers as she shoves him over enough to squeeze under the covers.

He refuses to ask her about what she and Walter discussed. He doesn't want to know any of it. For some reason the whole injustice of the fact that they're alive to go through this hell isn't enough anymore. So they have a little silent standoff, Olivia's back against the wall and Peter's face smashed into his pillow.

"Do you ever wonder what it would be like if things were normal?" she finally asks, taking the chance that he faked falling asleep. His little huff is resigned.

"More and more everyday." He answers, finally getting his limbs under him enough to raise his head to look at her. Her voice doesn't match the state of her face, and he's reminded what a dick he can be sometimes. He also noticed she's wearing one of his shirts. He mulls that over.

"What did Walter say?" he finally asks.

She shrugs, pulling her bare legs up to her chest and Peter has to resist the urge to follow the lines of her calves as they meet the slope of her knee. He can see the splattering of bruises across the moonlight of smooth skin, not yet healed over. He concentrates on her dejected face instead. She doesn't notice him, her eyes locked on the small frame of Rachel and Ella.

"Olivia," he says softly, extending a hand to the knobbiest part of her bruised knee. "What is it?"

Her eyes are tired as she looks at him, his hand warm against her skin. Her skin cold against his hand.

"I'm a freak." She says without an ounce of emotion. It's difficult for him to hear, but he knows how she feels.

He doesn't respond to that, propping himself up on an elbow but not relinquishing his hold on her. It's dark enough in the room for her to share this; save for the little bedside lamp that's casting her in soft flickering light.

She gives him a little sad grin, liking the way his thumb rubs a pattern she can't discern on the inside of her leg that's dangerously close to a ticklish spot he doesn't know about.

"It's the Cortexiphan," she announces like she's talking about someone else. He waits for her to continue. "Something triggered it into activating. Walter guesses it's some sort of defensive reaction." She repeats Walter's excited words, unable to gauge Peter's reaction from being shadowed in too much darkness. His face is impossibly still, eyes flickering black whenever the generator loses juice for a moment. She's glad he doesn't say much, the conversation with Walter leaving her feeling much less like a person and more like Frankenstein's monster.

"Is that what you think?" he finally says from the darkness. His hand slides down the outside of her thigh, but she doesn't react.

"I feel like a walking failed science experiment," she says. _But that part's not the worst, _she decided when Walter told her: she could potentially set anything or anyone on fire from a case of the hiccups. All the good it's done them up to this point. She was supposed to be a warrior. She was supposed to save the world.

"No," Peter cuts off rising up to meet her gaze with that intense stare he shares with Walter. "I know where you're heading with this," his brows are so low that his forehead is distinctly black.

"There's nothing that you were supposed to do that would have changed what happened to this universe." Peter says.

She feels the slide of his palm across her jaw, tilting it; angling it toward him but she pulls away, tucking her chin against her shoulder. She hears him shift closer, shuffling the bedding until she can smell his proximity: an earthy aroma mixed with the stagnant air from outside and the soft, subtle hint of her on him too.

It makes her smile. It makes her feel indefeasibly better to have him say those words out loud.

She finally turns to face him, his warmth radiating into her and through the pinpoints of his fingertips across the straight lines of her collarbone. He's close to her, barely touching before his thumb dips below the material of his old worn shirt she's wearing.

"What are you doing?" she asks, but her eyes press shut when he tickles under her left ear.

"What are _you _doing?" he counters lightly before dipping to press his cheek against hers, planting a kiss below the spot his fingers just were.

"I thought you were busy being characteristically moody." She says as he nips playfully at her throat.

His lips trail gingerly down the slope of her neck, feeling exhilarated when she angles her head to give him better access. After everything that's happened outside the lab, after the dramatic shift in their relationship, the downward spiral that would inevitably leave them either dead or worse.

The moment he saw the shapeshifters traveling together had been an upsetting blow to him, decimating whatever hope he thought had still existed in the world with it. But the thought of losing Olivia at the moment the shotgun was aimed pulled a violent reaction from him that he didn't think himself capable.

"I'm feeling decidedly uncharacteristic." He offers as his tongue slides over the bruise he gave her earlier. The rapid intake of breath and the feeling of her fingers along his shoulder let him know he's fucked.

The moment he lost hope was the moment he knew he cared too much. And for a man that spent the majority of his adulthood not giving a damn about anything or anyone but himself it was deeply unnerving and wholly disconcerting for a man who made a living manipulating others. The fact that he's now responsible not only for his father, but for their little family and potentially for what's left of the world does little to make him feel anything but unquenching waves of terror.

Olivia scoots lower on the mattress, pulling him down to cover her and he follows gratefully, pinning her to the bed and finding her mouth hot and willing against his. He slips a hand under the shirt she's wearing to feel skin that he's practically memorized at this point.

He pushes the terror to the bottommost part of his stomach as he reaches for the hem of the shirt to snake up and off, deciding that maybe they can fake normal inside the lab, even if the world's burning around them.


	16. Dusty Bottle of MacCutcheon

A/N:We've finally settled into M. Feels like home.

A big ol' zombie sniping shout out to Screech for the extensive work done to clean this chapter up. All feedback welcomed.

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><p>Weeks have passed since Peter killed the Resister and Olivia set fire to the shapeshifter. Admittedly, Peter's much more tolerable to live with, though his stubborn refusal to discuss Massive Dynamic hasn't changed.<p>

They agree not to tell Walter of the dangers outside the lab, not while he's close to making a break-through with what Peter dubs "cotton candy cure," since the antidote has faded from crimson to a diluted pink color as Walter continues to make adjustments.

No, Peter doesn't have much confidence in anything being able to correct the situation they're in. Olivia's given up trying to convince him otherwise. She just loads up the shotgun when she sees him packing up the same old canvas bag and follows him back out through the courtyard and into their broken world.

Olivia feels better carrying the shotgun, Peter feels better when she carries the shotgun. It feels like they're reclaiming some form of normalcy from their past life, even as they break into an old take out restaurant that's about six miles away from Harvard. From the looks of the decimated interior when they enter, the prospect of finding supplies isn't good. They sweep along the dining area, met only with broken glass and turned over tables and not much else. They try the kitchen instead.

"I used to love this place." Peter mumbles as he kicks aside a stack of old broken plates, finding nothing that's really usable.

"Bring lots of hot dates here?" Olivia ribs, her nose craning over the shotgun as she peeks around a corner.

Peter eyes crinkle as he chuckles, opening a few cupboards to find more useless dishes that are scarred by cracks and chips.

"You could say I didn't have much of a social life when I was dragged kicking back to Boston," he comments as Olivia returns, gun resting against her hip.

"Oh, I don't remember much kicking going on." Olivia says as she helps to go through drawers. The memory isn't a fond one for Olivia; the thought of John still painful but mostly a distant memory by now. The look on Peter's face as she first begged, then blackmailed in Iraq still brings a rush of affection she'd never admit to even with a gun to her face. Which, apparently, happens a lot now a days.

They've never bothered to really discuss the incident with the Resister, because frankly, every time she thinks about it her thought processes send her to the event following it and then she gets trapped in the freight train of images of Peter's face in the crook of her neck and thinking becomes difficult.

She can feel something changed in Peter the day he killed the Resister: the demeanor in which he moves around her, like he's caught in her orbit and silently circling on course; the penetrating glare she's not sure if she likes and the unflinching eye contact that makes her uncomfortable. And the fact that she can't sleep now without his warm breath against her neck.

They don't talk about what that means, either.

He knows better than to ask her not to come with him when they search for supplies. She thought he was going to try once, after he gave her a pointed look a few days after they dragged back the shapeshifter carcass, but the nasty glare she gives him and the shotgun wrapped around her shoulders causes him to sigh as he holds the door open for her as they leave.

"Jackpot." Peter says and Olivia realizes she's been staring at the same set of silverware without moving. She finds him kneeled down under an overturned table, dust rising up around him as he digs through an old cardboard box with scratched writing on the side. He produces a can of green beans and smiles. Olivia crouches in the debris next to him, straining to see over him. His smile is wide as he scoots over so she can squeeze in next to him as he strips off the canvas bag to open it between them.

"Good news?" Olivia asks.

"There's about twelve cans in here," Peter says, pulling them out one by one to inspect before depositing them in the bag. "This'll beat the hell out of old saltines and sprinkles for dinner." He stops, a smile breaking out when he sees something she doesn't. He carefully lifts an old dusty bottle out for her to see.

"MacCutcheon," he says admiring, "old enough to have its own scotch." His excitement is thick; palpable, and Olivia does something new. His smile stalls when she reaches out to touch the skin of his wrist where his leather gloves aren't covering, his smile recedes and is replaced first with concern, then confusion as he waits for her to tell him what the hell is going on.

She's not sure why, but she's engulfed with the sudden urge to touch him, to feel the surge of excitement humming through his veins. Her touch is tentative but persistent; he follows her movements with his eyes as she slides a thumb under the cuff of his coat. As soon as she touches him he almost drops the bottle back in the box, and that would have been a shame since it's been forever since he's had scotch.

"Do you feel that?" she asks in the softest of whispers, and he's not sure if she's talking to him or at him, so he doesn't answer, taking in her foggy, unfocused eyes that are miles away even though she's facing him. She smiles.

"Feel what?" he finally prods when he finds his voice, her fingers seeking more skin and feel like spider's legs. It gives him goose bumps and he shivers.

There's a long moment before her eyes suddenly snap back into focus, she blinks a few times and she releases her hold on him. Her cheeks are stained red and she flashes him an embarrassed smile.

"Sorry," she concedes as she moves to stand. His hand snaps out to grip her leg before she's able to backtrack. His neck's tingling, shoulders tight and abdomen burning and for some reason he just knows it's because of her.

He conveys his questions through his confused face and he sees that her eyes are nearly black, shadowed by whatever emotion it is she's trying hard to cover. He has the fear, however fleeting, that he might be seconds from sparking from the intense gaze she's casting at him, but as soon as the thought flits across his consciousness he feels Olivia jerk backward, on her feet and putting distance between them.

"We should get back." She says, her voice a little rough as she slings the gun back over her shoulder. She's pink, heat radiating off every neuron and upset for reasons she can't justify. Peter watches, jaw firmly set as she pushes open the doors to the dining room and disappears on the other side. He gives her a moment's head start before he finishes loading the bag, mind reeling as he zips it up and joins her on the other side.

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><p>The scotch brings some unlikely cheer to the normal melancholy of the lab. Astrid gives a little girly squeal when Peter produces it from the bag, abandoning her knitting excitedly to pry the bottle from Peter's fingers with a smile that lights the entire room around them. Walter's more interested in the canned goods than the alcohol, digging through the contents of the black bag until he finds a can that he claims as his own.<p>

"How much food will we need when we leave for New York?" Walter asks excitedly as he spoons in a mouthful of corn as Peter opens the scotch.

Olivia's been quiet since their return, electing to stand in the background awkwardly to watch the events play out before her. More specifically, to watch Peter. When Walter asks this she stares pointedly at him, waiting for him to respond. Peter's got a glass that's half full before he tenses, and Olivia can feel his inner monologue churning between saying something scathing and flat out lying. She knows this because Peter feels it; the moment he found the scotch in the restaurant she could feel his spike of excitement pounding through her own veins, so much that she had to tether herself by touching him. She liked feeling it. Feeling him.

But Olivia's…okay with it.

"How's that cure, Walter?" Peter asks dryly, carrying on his pouring like Walter hadn't said anything at all. Walter grins through his mouthful, shuffling back to pick up his notes for review. Peter hands the first glass to Astrid and starts on his second pour with a mutinous sneer that Olivia knows he's trying to pass off as a smile. She leans against the railing

"I have high expectations that Massive Dynamic will be able to synthesize the antibodies into a viable cure." Walter says. Olivia knows his words fall on deaf ears as Peter's eyes finally find hers and she knows he's trying to read how she'll react. When Olivia makes no move to interfere with Peter's subtle sidestepping, his smile loosens. He takes purposeful steps toward her, arm outstretched with her glass.

Olivia smiles and takes the proffered glass, his fingers sparking as they graze hers. There are rumblings in his fingertips, dancing thoughts that she can't hear but it makes her skin vibrate.

"You okay?" Peter asks gently when he notices her cheeks flushing. Olivia opens her mouth to answer but is cut off by Astrid.

"To the end of the world." She boasts with glass raised high.

Olivia follows with her glass, ignoring Peter. Peter raises the whole bottle.

Peter feels pleasantly buzzed after the first two glasses.

After the fifth, the room's spinning.

The bottle is almost polished off, sitting between them on the table, cap left abandoned on the floor somewhere after they decided it was too good to save for later.

"Can we take a car?" Walter asks as he scrapes the bottom of his second can. Peter's throat scorches as he throws back the remainder of his drink, reaching out to pour himself another.

"Sure, Walter. Sure." Peter placates, spinning the amber around the bottom of the glass and feeling Olivia's eyes on his back. Walter eyes him suspiciously, and Peter twists his head to catch Olivia's narrowed eyes.

"And Astrid will come." Walter's tone is firm.

Astrid's head perks up from the couch, her hair bouncing as she rests her elbows along the back, her drink dangerous close to tipping sideways.

"We're going?" she asks, looking at Peter. "To Massive Dynamic?" She hiccups and giggles, not catching the narrowed look that Peter gives her.

"Peter," Olivia says warningly, and Peter's face relaxes. He nods at Walter, but the affirmation is wasted. Walter smiles, raising up to squeeze Peter's shoulder.

"It's the right thing, son." He says and Peter's face tightens. Walter says his goodnights and shuffles to bed. Olivia watches as Peter's shoulders hunch as soon as Walter's door closes.

"Night Walter," he whispers. Olivia wonders why he waited so long to say it.

Astrid is snoozing lightly on the couch, her third glass sitting lightly on her thigh, her fingers already unfurled around the glass and the remainder of the scotch forgotten. Peter's perched on his old stool, spinning his glass between two fingers and watching Olivia as she gently takes the glass from Astrid's fingers to wake her up enough so she can go to bed too.

"Do you want the couch back?" Astrid mumbles drunkenly, pushing her curls off her face before realizing that she's fallen asleep. Olivia smiles, pulling Astrid up with a strong hand and Peter watches as Astrid stumbles off to flop onto her bed in the back corner that used to be Gene's stall.

When Astrid's safely in bed, Olivia returns and leans against the table that Peter's sunken against, bumping his shoulder to jolt him back awake. She feels his pleasant numbness, the way his back tingles and the proximity of her being close to him.

"How are you not drunk?" Peter says with glassy eyes, looking up at her as he spins the glass between his fingers and the laminate of the table. Olivia leans a little closer, taking his glass and tilting it back to finish it in one gulp. Her face purses as the fire rakes down her throat and she feels the tickle of his impressed smile.

"I've been drinking scotch since I was fourteen." She says in perfectly sober pitch, sliding the glass back toward him. It skids to a stop an inch from his fingers but he makes no effort to take it. He's had enough.

"I'm not changing my mind about Massive Dynamic, you know." He says suddenly, looking intently at the empty glass. Olivia sighs, feeling his mood sour. Ready for her.

"I was going to ask if you were ready for bed." She answers sweetly, nudging his shoulder once before pushing herself back upright. She waits to see which way he tips. He huffs; straightens his back and pushes himself up on shaky legs. The room tilts a few inches to the right. It's been a long time since he's been drunk. A real long time.

"You coming?" she asks, hand already on the door across the lab. She cocks her head in his direction, like she's choosing something about him, making a decision and it makes his chest burn for some unknown reason even though it's probably just from the alcohol.

"After you." He mutters as he does his best to follow her in the darkened room.

He lands on his back on the bed, fully clothed and feeling light and heavy at the same time. Olivia muffles a laugh as she flicks on the lamp next to them before shrugging off the sweater she's wearing and padding over to her dresser to pull out some sweat pants and her old Northwestern t-shirt.

Peter watches from his little perch on the bed, propping up one elbow as she pulls her old tanktop over her head to toss into a corner. The burning in his chest drops rapidly to pool low in his belly and he wonders at the moment they slipped in this little routine and why the sight of her naked back draws an instant reaction from him. He blames the scotch.

She pauses as she reaches behind her back to unclasp her bra. Looking over her shoulder she catches him staring. Her back glows in the soft light, he sits up on the bed.

"What?" she asks. There's the sound of springs as Peter scoots off the bed, taking soft steps until he's inches from her back, his breath hot against her skin. His desire ripples against the fine hairs on her skin and she has to repress the urge to shudder. She feels a little thrill of exhilaration at feeling out the hum of his emotions; thinking she should ask Walter about it, but secretly she wants to keep it to herself. For a little bit, anyway.

"I don't expect you to agree," Peter's breath is a warm tide against her ear, his fingers trailing a path along her shoulders, lingering on the straps of her bra; his voice thick. "But I do want you to understand."

His breath is diluted in the aroma of the alcohol, but she doesn't miss the unmistakable smell of him from not far underneath. He brushes his lips against her, his fingers nudging impatiently at the fabric as it creeps closer to the end of her shoulders.

"Who says you get to make the decision for all of us?" she asks after a deep swallow. His lips trail behind his fingers, finally sliding the straps off her shoulders and he slides his hands down the sides of her arms to let it fall soundlessly to the floor.

She feels his lips curl into a smile. His fingers creep onto her stomach, smoothing over the taut skin with his palms.

"You never listen to sound advice." He says.

"And you never listen to anyone but yourself." She returns. The smile fades; his fingers still. She feels his defiance; it dips for the briefest of seconds, his fingers continuing up their path to creep to the underside of her breasts.

"He's my father," he breathes as a means of explanation; pressing against her, feeling her lean against his chest. Olivia's positive it's not what he means. One hand disappears to sweep the curtain of hair from the side of her neck to give him better access. Peter's hands drop back to her chest, running a line over her clavicle with his thumbs before dipping between the valley of her breasts. She reaches behind her to find his belt buckle and is greeted with a hard nip on her shoulder and his hands smothering her chest completely.

She suddenly spins, her cold hands sneaking under the material of his shirt to find his bare chest scorching. His eyes are dangerously dark; his lips parting as he breathes.

"You can't protect him forever." Olivia whispers as she pushes the shirt up and over his head, catching his arms when he reluctantly lets go of her, finally raising them up enough to get it off and onto the floor. His face is torn; between the darkness of his resentment and the overwhelming heat burning his fibers with her half naked in his arms.

"I don't like being ganged up on," he says in a serious voice, his head dipping against her ear when she unbuckles his belt. "And you're not playing fair," his whisper grates when she starts on the button to his jeans.

"This isn't a game." She answers, sliding her hand into the open material. He grips her wrist so hard that her hand opens involuntarily.

"No, it's not." His eyes are feral, his voice steel and she freezes. "There's so much death out there Olivia," he says, his voice impossibly low. He cups her cheek with a spare hand, trying to settle his pounding emotion. "It'll be a death march." She lets him work through his apprehensions, fears; feeling his ripples of hope as he starts to ebb.

"It doesn't have to be." She whispers against his lips, brushing them but not applying pressure. His grip on her wrist loosens and she takes him in hand, his throat making a little strangled sound that she finally covers with her mouth.

"It could save everyone." She says against his lips and she feels him surrender; his concession with his hands as crushes her with a furious kiss, gripping her face to his. He drops his hands to her waist, dipping his fingers into the waistband and backing her into the wood of the dresser.

"Don't tell me in the morning that this was just part of your master plan," he mumbles as he scrapes his teeth against her neck as his fingers make quick work of her jeans.

Olivia smiles and responds with a firm tug and Peter hisses.

"So you're on board with saving the world?" she breaks off their kiss to ask. Peter's look is speculative before arranging his features into something softer. Something optimistic.

The feeling's beautiful.

* * *

><p>When Olivia wakes some hours later, she knows they're not alone.<p>

The office is dark, the shadows stretching along the avocado-colored walls and onto the ceiling with creeping fingers pooling distorted faces against the paint. For the briefest of moments she's tempted to reach for the gun she remembers is missing because she knows someone's in the room with them. The shapeshifter is veiled in the darkened corner, and it's familiar, but she can't recognize it. Her lungs fill with concrete when it steps into a flicker of light and she can make out its features enough that her knees lock in terror. The floorboards whine underfoot as it shuffles closer and she knows who it even if the features are obscured in the dimness.

When she feels a warm arm drape around her waist from behind there's a new sense of panic washes over her before she realizes the arm belongs to Peter, which doesn't make any sense because he's currently standing a few feet from her, staring at the edge of the bed with dead eyes and sagging skin. Peter's normally dark hair is dusted in salt and pepper against his skull and the ratty lab coat is smeared in crusted blood as he hunches closer, his slippered feet leaving a trail of red footprints behind. All air vanishes, the scream drowning in her throat and she chokes. She twists her head back and Peter's still laying beside her, very much alive, but his malevolent eyes are spearing her and blood is dripping from his mouth. He smiles.


	17. Olivia Wakes

A/N: Epic fail on the Monday postings. Recently moved and didn't have the internet restored until a few days ago (plus between packing and moving, there wasn't a lot of writing going on!) To make it up, I'll make sure Fringe returns this Friday! :)

Another big THANK YOU to Professor Tweed Cardigan- without the constant help with plotting, characterization, and MOTIVATION (not to mention the extensive editing skillz) this chapter would never have made it past the initial "blank screen" stage. Literally.

* * *

><p>"Quit fidgeting, will ya?" Peter says when he's knuckled out of sleep, Olivia's shoulder jerking against his chest hard enough to jostle the mattress they're curled up on. She does it again so he slides an arm around her waist, rubbing a circle over her stomach that he learned haphazardly calms her down during nightmares. He's already half asleep again until she kicks sharply against the mattress and he's fully awake.<p>

"What is it?" his voice husky against her skin, feeling a little more alert as he strains to hear her mumble syllables in her sleep he doesn't catch.

Olivia kicks suddenly turn violent, throwing Peter's arm off like he's trying to strangle her.

"Olivia," Peter says more urgently, sitting upright and gripping her shoulder as she fights to throw her would be attacker off. Olivia's skin is slick with sweat, her arms slippery between his fingers as he attempts to grab hold of her thrashing limbs as she attempts to get out of his grip. She mumbles the same unknowable something again and Peter shakes her.

The Peter-shapeshifter grips her hard on either shoulder and opens his mouth, his teeth glistening through blood and darkness. She pulls back a wild arm to rear forward-

"Olivia, woah," she hears him say before there's a quick yelp and she's suddenly upright in bed with a start watching Peter holding his nose with one hand as blood trickles through his fingers.

"Peter!" she exclaims, chest heaving and reaching out to touch his shoulder, finding in relief that it's warm and he's not a shapeshifter. _Of course not,_ she thinks to herself. With watering eyes, Peter wipes the blood from under his nose.

"Sonofabitch," he hisses, his hand pulled back from his face to look disbelievingly at his hand that's now red from being punched in the face. Olivia stumbles out of bed to grab a fistful of tissues from her desk for him, smashing it with into his palm, the images still burned into her retinas.

"Can't we do anything normal without me ending up bleeding?" he bitches, cleaning himself up with the proffered Kleenex and fingering the bridge of his nose to make sure it isn't broken. When it doesn't crack, he huffs,

"What the hell was that?"

Olivia's wiping the hair from her face and still standing on the cold floor, watching Peter toss the used tissue into a waste basket and trying to not imagine him as the same shapeshifter from her dream. It's easier when he looks at her with one eye squeezed shut and his nose swollen, but it doesn't settle her shaking hands. He takes in her broken stance without comment; his face finally softening and he opens his hand to welcome her back to bed.

"Sorry," she grumbles as she slides into bed, molding her back against his chest. "Nightmare."

"Wanna talk about it?" he asks half-heartedly as he helps smooth the hair away from her forehead when she settles on her side. She shakes her head against the pillow, but lets him rub reassuring circles against the overheated skin of her back.

"If you want your bed back, all you have to do is ask." He says with classic Peter sarcasm, rearranging his legs around hers as his hand smooths over her arm.

When his hand creeps to her left breast she makes a face in the darkness.

"Peter?"

"Sorry," he mumbles, not sorry at all.

Olivia forgets about the dream as she settles back in, the images already blurred as she feels Peter's stuffy breathing even out against her neck.

She's lulled back into the blackness of sleep.

They're not asleep long before the sirens break through the darkness.

Peter hears them first this time, but Olivia's a close second, and her skin hums with something she can't quite name. It's a terrifying something. Peter's out of bed and sliding into a pair of jeans when her hand snakes out to grip his arm with steel fingers.

"What?" he shouts over the wailing, his pants still hanging around his hips as her fingers tighten across his wrist hard enough to bruise.

Olivia wants to explain the sudden onset of emotions to Peter, the dread and paralyzing feeling that something is happening that she knows they can't stop, and she fights and loses anything coherent that might be of help. The emotion's a pulsing that's wrapping around her ribs and she's feeling pressed hard under the sensation, unable to breathe.

"Don't go out there," she blurts, earning her a confused look and a misguided sympathetic smile.

"Walter's probably got another friend wandering around outside," Peter says. Olivia's stomach lurches.

"What is it?" Peter's smile is wiped clean as he takes in her whitened face and shakes loose of her hold, the little white lines already forming on his arm. He grabs his sweatshirt from the foot of the bed and tries to force the blood back into his fingers.

He leans down to reach for her shoulder when her head pivots toward him; her eyes clear, grabbing his arm again with hard nails. He winces.

"Walter." Is all she can get out before there's a deafening crash of glass in the lab and Peter feels the whoosh in his face as the blood drops to his toes. He shakes out of her grip for the second time to race into the lab without waiting for explanation.

Olivia rolls numbly from the bed after him, and nearly tumbles into the wall of Peter's back where he stopped a foot outside the room leading into the lab. The sirens drown whatever he mutters under his breath, from if it's anything like what he's emanating—it's not good.

She knows from the jacking terror raising high in Peter's chest before she even sees them. They're here.

Olivia can count three shapeshifters trolling around the small vicinity of the lab, praying there aren't more that have made it through the broken door. She half-expects to recognize one of them from her dream, hoping dizzily it might make her feel in more control, but she doesn't, they're just grey and decaying and wearing dead faces of people she'll never know. There are two men and one particularly fresh female whose skin still retains some pinkness with brilliant red hair that's now russet with either dirt or blood. The tallest of the men gravitate to the dead shapeshifter left on the gurney as the others spread out, shuffling around the lab.

Peter's stomach does a back flip into his throat when the tall shapeshifter pushes through the stomach, the putrid stench reeking as skin and muscle tear under the blade of its hand to pull out strings of intestine before the other two catch the stink.

His skin quivers as Peter screams for his body to not react, his breath shallow in his chest as he watches the three open the dead shapeshifter up like a buffet. He takes a measured step backward, not daring to breathe, but the floor whines traitorously underfoot when he touches down.

He freezes, the slight sound makes his bones vibrate and he winces. Olivia's nails dig into his back like she's palming a bowling ball. Despite the cover of sirens, all three shapeshifters twist their heads in their direction.

"Fuck." He mouths, not wasting air on words.

There's a stretch of time where eternity extends over the pause of a few seconds where the shapeshifters just stare at Peter and Peter stares back and wishes he were invisible.

Maybe they'll luck out and they'll go back to eating and they'll have enough time to grab the gun. His eyes trickle to where Astrid's little room is; finding only the disheveled bed where she should be. It's empty.

Peter's eyes shift to Walter's door for a split second and Olivia's earlier warning hits him like a truck. He calculates his chances of getting to Walter, warring between shouting a warning him to stay put, but between the three of them and possibly more in the corridors outside, he's afraid the attention would only direct them to Walter. He chances another step.

The air ripples, _actually ripples, w_hen all three shapeshifters react as quickly as a firing squad; stumbling over lab equipment as they break into a broken gait toward them. The woman crashes into the table where the alarm system monitors are set up, crashing them to the floor. The sirens give out when the equipment cracks against the tile and Peter's finally able to hear again. Small successes.

"Get back inside!" Olivia shouts through the ringing in Peter's ears as she drags him back in the office, rocketing the door on its hinges. Peter rams his shoulder just as a set of fingers wrap over the frame. There's a screech when the fingers break through bone as both Peter and Olivia slam their weight until the dead skin gives; severing the digits completely and dropping them to the floor as the door latches shut. There's a face pressed against the frosted glass window matching the outline of Peter's like a sideshow mirror as he jams his shoulder against the frame. Olivia drops low, bracing her back against to bottom of the door and scrambling to find something to protect them with.

"Gun," Peter grunts as the glass cracks and splinters into little spider web patterns against his shoulder.

"You can't hold them back by yourself," Olivia shouts back, digging her heels into the floor when the door thumps angrily against the frame. She can see the shotgun across the room, leaning mockingly out of reach in the corner. It might as well be on Mars.

"Get the goddamned gun or we don't stand a chance." Peter snarls and the glass finally shatters, littering Olivia's hair but she doesn't feel it, pushing upright and running full sprint to make a grab for the shotgun. Peter's got all his weight thrown against the door, his bleeding shoulder screaming in protest when the glass shreds the sweatshirt to burrow into his skin.

The mutilated hand reaches through the broken glass, scrabbling against Peter's face, unable to find purchase with the inconvenience of no longer having fingers.

"Get down!" Olivia shouts, and as soon as Peter hears the words he drops, the explosion from the round shattering more glass above him as it barrels into the shapeshifter. It falls out of sight as the shorter male breaks through the door. Peter scrambles for something around him as the door is thrown open and the shapeshifter steps over its fallen comrade. Another blast hits it fully in the chest but doesn't slow it down as it stalks to where Peter's laying.

"It's gotta be in the head!" Peter yells as he scrambles backward, slipping over broken glass and discarded clothing.

"I know, I know," Olivia answers as she cranks for another shot.

Peter's always been one for improvising in tight situations; often enough he's able to talk (or manipulate, or bribe) his way out of the worst spots before the need for violence even presents itself. Zombies ironically don't respond to reason, so he skips all that and grabs the legs of Olivia's office chair to swing with such force that he throws himself off-balance when it cracks into the side of the shifter. Momentum slams it into doorframe and gives Olivia enough time to fire off another shot that disappears into one eye and erupts out the back, painting the lab behind it.

Olivia staggers next to him as Peter doubles over trying to catch his breath, steadying himself with his hands on his knees. He looks up as Olivia looks down, her oversized shirt hanging off one shoulder as she cradles the gun to nudge the dead carcass laying face down in their bedroom.

"There's one more." Peter says through steadying breathes and Olivia's dashing around the shattered glass and into the lab, Peter following, ready for more of them to attack.

Olivia scans the lab over the double barrel of the gun, every nerve on fire and ready to coil her finger over the trigger. The lab's wrecked: the monitors lying crushed on the floor, smoke curling lazily through the broken glass and plastic; the half-eaten shapeshifter that was once Walter's science experiment now spread open like a Thanksgiving turkey; the shattered lab door that they somehow found.

But no sign of the third zombie.

"He probably slept through the entire thing," Peter says as he trips over the equipment and up the small flight of steps to Walter's room. The doors locked.

"Astrid?" Olivia calls throughout the empty lab.

"Walter," Peter raps quickly on the door, jerking the knob as hysterics bubble up his vocal chords.

Olivia's disappeared through the broken threshold, stepping through the splintered doors into the hallway as Peter continues to pound on the door. He briefly considers kicking it in when the doorknob clicks and the door creeps open.

"Finally," Peter breathes as he pushes his way into the room, heaving a sigh of relief as the door swings open.

It's short lived when he's blinded by something shattering against the side of his head, throwing him against the door jamb.

"God DAMN it, Walter!" Peter snarls when he can finally see through the broken glass.

Walter stands over Peter's crumbled form with the remains of the cracked McCutcheon bottle poised over his head, his wrinkles pulled tight from surprise.

"Peter," Walter says, dropping the remainder of his weapon to stoop beside Peter. "Why didn't you tell me it was you?"

Peter pulls back his hand to find that he's bleeding. Again. His scalp had just healed from the jump from the bed and breakfast.

"I heard the commotion." Walter says as he inspects his handy work in Peter's hairline.

"Did you think a zombie would knock, Walter?" Peter asks between finger-fulls of broken glass.

"Zombies? I heard the siren," Walter remarks, his eyes bright in consternation. He helps Peter upright, who looks around to make sure Astrid isn't hiding waiting to hit him with something else.

"Astrid here?" Peter asks.

Walter's furrowed brow tells Peter that no, Astrid's not there.

Walter's mouth opens to say something but the words never reach Peter's ears, the echo of the shotgun blast rings out behind them and Peter pivots; shouting for Walter to lock the door behind him as another discharge erupts and he's running full speed ahead, feet pounding to try to locate the sound. There's another gunshot and his heart plummets to his stomach.

"Olivia!" Peter shouts as he almost slides right past the front door, tripping over the broken wood and having to catch himself to fling himself into the hallway. The sulfur smell of the discharges hangs low in his lungs when he finds her.

Olivia's splayed on her back on the floor, the dead shapeshifter lying face-down inches away from her feet; she's clicking the empty chamber over and over again even though the missing side of its skull is indicating it won't get back up. The relief floods through him like spilt milk, thick and heavy and fills his chest. He approaches her carefully out of gun range, reaching out to gently nudge the barrel of the gun to the side so he can kneel beside her.

"Snuck up on me," she sputters through quickened breathes. Peter nods encouragingly as he eyes the shapeshifter that looks decidedly more like Swiss cheese than human.

"At least you didn't set her on fire." Peter comments dryly as he grabs the gun and helps her up, his hand smoothing down the hair over the nape of her neck.

"What happened to your head?" Olivia asks but there are sirens going off in Peter's head that rival their flawed outdoor security system.

"It's not the same shapeshifter from the lab." He says abruptly. The brown hair curls over its bony shoulders, falling onto the floor in clumpy, bloodied tendrils. Olivia's eyes go wide as she realizes what Peter's saying.

Peter's two feet back toward the door when the sound of footfall echo through the hallway and Peter and Olivia both clench at the exact same time, skittering to a halt. Olivia's heart thumps rhythmically in her chest, keeping time with Peter's as he clutches her wrist too hard as the sound grows; intensifying and finally cresting over the musky air of the hallway.

"Which direction is it coming from?" Olivia's voice is haggard from strain, twisting back and forth between the opposite hallways they find themselves in the middle of.

Peter doesn't answer; she doesn't need him to. His panic blips on her radar just the same as if he screamed his uncertainty at her. She takes another step in the direction of the door, spinning her sight around looking for something that might be more helpful than the empty gun.

When they spill over the corner she feels like she gets punched in the chest—and she can't distinguish if the feeling's hers or Peter's. She doesn't give a fuck because there's currently dozens of shapeshifters all staring directly at them.

"Fuck me," is all Peter says, swallowing harshly before he gets ready to run.


	18. Infiltration

The shapeshifters are a mass of ugly decaying faces; indistinguishable from one another other than varying degrees of dead as they pack through the hallway and push against one another to force their way to where Olivia and Peter are standing.

It seems counterintuitive to run toward the pack of flesh-eating shifters, but Peter takes off in front of Olivia, dragging her along behind him to shove her into the lab in front of him, lifting the door and the knotted chains and busted locks to block the frame.

Walter wanders out of his room, his robe still tied and broken bottle in hand.

"Get back inside, Walter!" Peter grunts as he and Olivia grab one end of the massive bookcase to drag in front of the door. It screeches in protest against the floor, leaving deep impressions as they pull. They barely push it firmly in place before the pounding on the other side vibrates the wood. Peter's already half-way to the couch to push before Olivia catches up to him.

"I can't find Astrid," Walter says, wringing his hands and oblivious to the commotion.

"We have more shells for that thing?" Peter shouts over the angry pounding from outside their door.

"Peter," Walter interjects when the couch is set. "Astrid could be out there."

Olivia's rifling through their emergency supplies for bullets, throwing boxes and lab notes out of her way as she searches. She's going to die, _they all are_, she decides as her trembling fingers touch the sturdy outline of the small box full of shotgun shells. Part of her just wants it to over; the other part wants to take as many shapeshifters out with her before she goes.

"Olivia," Walter stands a foot away from her, "Astrid could be out there." He repeats. Olivia looks up and wants to tell him it'll be okay. The whole lab trembles from the pressure from the shapeshifters trying to get inside. She won't lie to him, not even now.

"If she is," Olivia says, standing and loading the gun as the wood of the bookcase wobbles dangerously, "she's already a shapeshifter." She says flatly. Walter's face goes from horror to defiance in the spaces between Olivia's words.

"No," he says, backing from Olivia. "We're just going to leave her out there? It's Astrid!" he argues.

"Get him out of here!" Peter shouts as the bookcase thumps against the barrier of the wall and the couch. He's hidden behind a counter, working furiously on something that Olivia can't see but whatever it is, she hopes it'll be more helpful than his crowbar. She grabs Walter's elbow to lead him back up to his room.

"Walter, I promise we will do everything we can to find her." Olivia says urgently when Walter refuses to go, astonished how strong a man of Walter's age is.

"You must find her," Walter finds her eyes and finally lets her lead him, taking the steps two at a time to his office.

"I promise," Olivia answers, avoiding his sightline as she guides him inside, grabbing the doorknob as the room dwarfs Walter's size.

"Don't open the door," she tells him, trying to memorize his salt and pepper hair and the hunch of his shoulders, everything she associates him with. "No matter what. Okay?" she says, her palms slick with sweat that this might be the last time he sees her alive.

Walter nods numbly and she locks the door behind her.

Her chest vibrates when the bookcase splinters, the cracking sound an explosion inside the lab as she scrambles across the space to find Peter. He's on his hands and knees, twisting a roll of duct tape around aerosol cans, her lead pipe tucked into his back pocket, straining against the fabric. There are bottles filled with yellowish liquid with rags hanging from the necks, the smell of kerosene mixing with the leathery scent of Peter as he works.

"What is _that?" _Olivia asks, taking in Peter's frantic hands. Peter fingers stop as he looks up to where Olivia's standing over him, the line between his forehead black and crusted with dried blood.

"What are you doing out here?" he asks incredulously before busying himself again with lifting the cans to see if they fit in his hand, leaving the three glass bottles undisturbed.

"What the hell are you doing?" she says, ignoring his question entirely; daring him to tell her to hide. She'll kill him herself if he thinks she's going to leave him, never mind the motherfucking shapeshifters. Peter chews angrily on his jaw before letting his lopsided grimace hide his features.

"You never did this when you were a kid?" He asks lightly before picking up a lighter from the counter, jamming it into his pocket. Despite his hopeful face, she feels him; feels the way his dread seeps wantonly across his chest as he thinks of her—and she knows how much he wants her to leave. There's affection there, too, prickling the outsides delicately.

"No, I had a great desire to live, even as a child." She answers as she shakes loose of his feelings.

"I'm not going anywhere." She reminds him defiantly, the crashing from the other side of their barrier louder as hands break through the wood. She can see faces on the other side, grotesque faces twisted by whatever it is that affects them. She swallows. She looks to Peter who's looking back at her and she moves before he can.

She kisses him hard and fast on the mouth, grabbing the side of his face to pull in before breaking the kiss with a pop; his wide eyes glassy as she pumps the gun, feeling the casing slide in place. The sound from the shapeshifters outside funnels into the lab as they continue to push through the barrier, throwing volumes of books that Olivia will never read onto the cushions of the couch.

She feels Peter shift, his emotions flat-lining as he flanks her, shoulder to shoulder: ready.

She aims.

The first discharge explodes from the gun to the middle of the pack, hitting a shapeshifter with sloughing black hair as it crawls through the frame of the bookcase, splattering it backward into the crowd. The bookcase wobbles again as more grey hands push through the opening, trying to tear it down. Olivia strides forward cocking and aiming again, the second round hitting two more that droop against the pushing crowd. The bookcase cracks as it tears in two; toppling over the top of the couch with a thud and the floodgates open as shapeshifter after shapeshifter push past the barrier into the lab.

Peter shakes the can furiously beside her, nudging her to get her feet moving as the stream of shapeshifters stumble over one another onto the couch and to the floor. There's a flash of the lighter and the end of Peter's bottle erupts into flame as it sprays out a few feet ahead of where they're standing, dangerously close to licking the side of Olivia's face.

"Jesus," Olivia shouts, jerking away from the heat. The fire catches the flannel clothing of the first zombie that's managed its way into the lab, screeching as the flannel sizzles to its skin as it falls backward and back into the pile. Olivia takes aim and fires; exploding its head as two more shifters climb over it.

Peter swings the spray to the left as more zombies stumble in, breathing fire as he sweeps along the perimeter of the army of undead; catching clothing and hair and rotten flesh as he moves and sweating bullets to contain the flames from burning the whole goddamned lab to the ground as he goes. A female shapeshifter breaks away from the crumpled crowd toward him, teeth bared and pink bathrobe twisted around its body as it jerks its legs toward Peter's direction.

Olivia's firing at will at the shapeshifters that have forced their way from the entrance, dropping them for the others to step on.

Peter's hands are cramping from holding the aerosol can so tightly; the roar of the fire pushing the horde to stampede into one another, grouping them together long enough for Olivia to blow chunks of them away, and Peter's maniacally remembering his time as a child burning ants with a magnifying glass.

Olivia's pumping and firing so quickly that her arms are burning by the time the she squeezes the trigger to an empty chamber; the hammer slamming down with click. It is unfortunate timing as a particularly rotten corpse whose burning flesh is blackened in places thanks to Peter stomps like a football player to where she's trying to reload. It takes a swing at her and she loses two shells ducking out of the way. She twists and swings the gun like a baseball bat, cracking its skull as it stumbles to its knees before she brings the butt of the gun down again and it makes a hallow sound when the cracked skull splinters open. When she pulls her gun away, she looks in disgust that she's covered zombie juice.

Peter's fingertips are blistered but he's still spraying the hell out of the front lines of the shapeshifters, hedging them back toward the entrance with a raw feeling of exhilaration that's not deterred though he's on bottle number two at this point. Olivia saddles up behind him, avoiding the fire as he catches the fine wispy hairs of a shapeshifter that looked like someone's grandmother in his perimeter.

"How much ammo you got left?" Peter asks as his spray sputters, the little bursts of flame trickling. He shakes the bottle, but from the weight he can tell it's damned close to empty.

"Not much," she mutters as she thumbs in the remaining shells she has left. Most of the shapeshifters are dead, splayed out across the lab with varying pieces of body parts missing or still smoldering. They jog up to the upper level of the lab, trying to put more distance between them and the few remaining zombies that have managed to stay alive and unscathed. Peter crouches down and pulls out the pipe as Olivia belts off another shot that makes Peter's ears ring; another shapeshifter dropping unceremoniously to the ground and turning the floor a sickly silver and red mix. There are three shapeshifters dragging themselves up to where Olivia and Peter are crouched; Olivia takes aim at one in a worn tweed cardigan as Peter draws back the pipe for the others.

"Astrid?"

Walter's voice is as gentle rain as it carries over the chaos of the lab. Olivia squeezes off another shot that wipes the face off the tweed cardigan like Walter's Mr. Papaya experiment. She turns to the next one and there's another click letting her know she's out of ammo again, the resonating sound of her empty gun more terrifying than the gurgling, sucking noises the two pursuing shapeshifters have. She fumbles around and finds two more shells to load.

"Walter, get back!" Peter shouts as he drives the lead pipe into the short, squat shapeshifter in faded blue jeans, avoiding its snapping teeth as he struggles to gain a solid lock onto Walter's location. Olivia swings the gun toward him, trying to take aim as the shapeshifter snarls angrily in Peter's face, pushing them both backward into a table holding Walter's lab notes, and the paper flies up into a cloud of confetti as they tumble.

"Walter!"

The new voice startles Olivia's aim, the delicate sound instantly recognizable.

Astrid stands a few feet from Walter's room, her knitting needles clasped against her chest and Peter's new blanket lying finished on the floor.

"Astrid!" Walter exclaims, shuffling across the space that separate them, unknowing or uncaring about the hordes of shapeshifters that are piled up around the lab to stand a few feet from Astrid.

"Where have you been?" Walter exclaims, his hands wringing.

"The roof," Astrid answers, as she looks around the lab, her eyes wide. "I couldn't sleep. I took the back access up to the roof level to work on Peter's blanket." She takes a step toward Walter. "What happened?"

Olivia watches their reunion in silent awe until Peter's grunt flickers her back to her surroundings. Peter swings a hard kick into the gut of the shapeshifter to throw it backward and Olivia blows its head off.

Walter takes two steps closer to Astrid when the jagged groan catches their attention. The shapeshifter is ragged and naked, the bones of its ribs sticking out from its rotted flesh as it moves to take a hungry step toward Walter.

Astrid and Walter both flinch as Olivia's last round pelts into the neck of the naked shapeshifter, splattering them both as it's blown backward into the wall before slumping to the ground.

Olivia smirks before diving back to the ground to try to find more shells to reload. Under the debris she skitters to the box of ammo and opens it: it's empty.

The dread stings like a railroad spike to Olivia's chest when she looks back from Peter who's picking himself up from the floor over to where Walter has come to an abrupt stop in front of Astrid, her mouth going dry as she sees what Walter's obviously noticed behind Astrid's shell-shocked right shoulder.

The redheaded shapeshifter that Olivia had forgotten steps out from the shadows. Olivia opens her mouth to shout a warning but her voice is lost in the sea of noise and she feels herself shatter: breaking apart from the inside out when the pink skin of the shapeshifter's hand wraps her fingers around Astrid's neck, digging into her flesh before Astrid has a chance to move. Olivia's heart hammers as it turns over in her chest, choking her into silence.

"Olivia!" Peter scrambles next to her, a beaker flying in the direction of the shapeshifter in a flannel nightgown that surprises her, the glass spraying when it cracks into its head and shatters enough to give Olivia the chance to kick herself backward and away, losing sight of Astrid and Walter. The flannelled shifter roars as it staggers, and Peter pushes past Olivia to drop the lead pipe onto its head and it struggles no more.

Olivia claws upright to find Walter and Astrid again, Peter tracing the horror in Olivia's face as Walter flings himself into the redheaded shifter, shoving it off of Astrid and knocking them all to the floor in one giant conglomeration of cotton and flaying limbs

"Walter, no!" Olivia distinctly hears the twinge in Peter's voice as he yells, his voice hedging on hysterics as Walter's quickly pushed onto his back by the shapeshifter; Astrid's lost and Peter and Olivia too far away to stop the play-out of events in front of them.

"Olivia, the gun!" Peter shouts as he rights himself, straining against the railing of the staircase, trying to push through another shapeless shapeshifter as it climbs to block him with its wet gurgles and angry snarls.

Olivia doesn't respond, the gun lying useless against her chest, her fingers clinched so hard around the metal that she's sure she's leaving imprints.

"Olivia!" Peter shouts again when the shapeshifter falls backward over the railing as Peter trips down the stairs, screaming at the top of his lungs, but Olivia can't hear the words, her entire being focused on Walter as the redhead sinks its teeth into Walter's forearm and his screams fill her chest with rising heat. She feels like she's watching herself watching a movie; unable to even shift a muscle as sound is lost inside the hum of the white noise blocking everything.

Her eyes shift to Peter as he yells frantically at her, his lips forming words that finally catch up with his voice when it reaches her ears like a snapped rubber band:

"Burn it!"

She can't.

But she doesn't know how to tell Peter that. She doesn't know how to breathe. Walter's wet cries fill the lab as she sinks down to her knees, despair crushing her throat and making her lightheaded. Peter screams for her; begging her, pleading: his voice ricocheting against the inside of her head and she's smothered by his voice.

"Olivia," his voice bridging on madness as he launches into a teenage shapeshifter like an angry bull, throwing it backward, "burn it!"

She can feel his desperation, concentrates all her anger, all her anguish on the russet-haired shapeshifter and demands it to explode; but as it goes down for another bite to Walter's outstretched arm undeterred, the uninhibited sickness in her chest flares in her failure. What happened in only a few seconds plays out in Olivia's mind as the longest stretch of time she's ever experienced.

It's all fast-forward again when it's Astrid who gets to Walter first, the oval of her face hidden by her hair as she emerges from behind the shapeshifter as it hovers over Walter, his blood on its lips and the glint of the needle flashes brightly as she plunges the end into its skull. She does it again. Then again. And again, until it drops over Walter and Astrid's knitting needle remains buried so tightly twisted in the red hair that it remains like a sword in stone.

Olivia hears Peter screams; Astrid's wet cry carrying over the noise of the lab her hands covered in Walter's blood—but more than anything Olivia feels the suffocating pain, the vast emptiness that's now in Peter's chest and the even more sickening feeling of her own grief. Without explanation, she imagines the bookkeeper's wife looking back accusingly at her from among the mutilated shapeshifters they've killed and the wet sob erupts from deep inside her chest as she finally understands why he kept her locked in the basement. And the guilt is almost as horrifying as the grief.

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><p>AN: another enormous shout out to Fringy High-Five for helping me get through this chapter.


	19. Walter

A/N: Thank you to everyone who's taken the time to read and review this massive beast. I can't believe people are sticking with this! :) A shout out to Doctor J/O for the massive support and editing skillz, like always.

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><p>The sun shines brightly overhead as Olivia's shoes crunch against the film of dust covering the surface of cracking asphalt as she walks, her shoulders throbbing as they strain under the pressure of the shoulder pack. She's hungry, drained and feels the pangs of nausea with every step. It's hard to not replay the events from days ago in the silence of the open air when there's nothing else to distract her.<p>

"_Walter, oh god." Peter's voice breaks through the tight hold of his throat as he skitters to a stop over his father's body. Astrid slumps against the wall a few feet away, staring at the blood coating her trembling hands. And the blood's everywhere: Astrid's, Walter's, the shapeshifter, all mixed together and splattered against the walls and smeared into Walter's robe._

Olivia lifts the strap to slide it across to her other shoulder, momentarily giving some relief to the aching muscle that's welted on one side. She walks another few blocks before the other shoulder starts to shout its protest. She's damned tired.

"_He's bleeding out," Peter says, pulling a sputtering Walter into a sitting position against the wall that's not stained in zombie blood. He pulls at the belt to Walter's robe to tighten a hard knot above the deep gash of ragged skin above Walter's right elbow. Olivia follows, tripping over dead shapeshifters as they reach out for her; all dead except for the one whose snapping jaws continue to gnash despite the little face that's left. She stops at Astrid first._

Olivia shakes the image away to look ahead; finding Peter's own pack strapped on his back a few yards ahead her, and the blackness drops back around her like her own personal fog. The images become more distinct the closer she gets to him. So she slows her pace, distancing herself from Peter.

"_Astrid," Olivia says, waiting for brown eyes to rise to meet hers. Astrid doesn't stop staring at Walter as he gasps loudly when Peter grabs some gauze from a nearby table, wedging it between his hand and the wound and causing Walter to howl in response. _

"_Olivia, I need you!" Peter calls for her then, his face pale and jaw so tightly clenched his lips barely move. _

"_Look at me, Astrid." Olivia says, blocking Astrid's view of the scene behind her with her shoulder. Olivia tilts Astrid's head with her knuckle, exposing the long scratch that's dripped long ribbons of blood down her shoulder to smear into her shirt. It's not a bite and it's shallow; she'll live._

"_Olivia," Peter's call is frantic, the red already seeping through the fabric to pool black between his fingers. Olivia gives Astrid a tight smile and leaves, dropping in between Peter and Walter, Peter's emotions radiating off him like a furnace. She blocks the pain and picks up on his determination; twisting his anger and finding it easier to be fueled by than that than the helplessness that's quickly on the cusp of overtaking her. _

"_Hold pressure, okay?" Peter tells her evenly, shifting to the side to let her put her hand over his before he releases Walter. The fabric is sticky-warm under her fingers, but the skin around the gash is cool; Walter's breathing shallow and her stomach rushes her throat like a linebacker. Peter's upright and sprinting across the lab before she's able to ask what he's doing. _

"_We don't have long," Olivia says instead to Peter's retreating form, leaning her weight into trying to staunch the bleeding she knows won't help. _

"_Just don't let go!" She hears Peter yell over his shoulder. Walter sucks in a long, ragged breath and lets go. _

"_I'm sorry." Olivia voice is low as she says it, the lump stuck somewhere between her ears and throat. Walter's complexion tilts to grey when he finally opens his eyes. He gives her a weak smile and places his good hand over her whitened one. _

"_You always were the strongest," Walter mumbles, speaking to Olivia like she's miles away. "At the trials, you were always the strongest." He's delirious, Olivia thinks, but before she can ask, Walter's eyes roll back into his skull and his chest heaves. _

The smattering of gunfire drops Olivia to her knees, but it's too far away to be dangerous. Peter hears it too, slowing his brisk pace with his shoulders hunched and tightening out like he's daring the gunfire to come closer. He turns back to Olivia, waiting for her to rise but not to dust herself off before setting off on his long gait again; his eyes dark before turning his back on her. It's been three days and he's barely talked to her. She starts after him, her chest burning.

_"Peter," Olivia calls frantically when Walter flat-lines, still clasping tight to the wound. She chances a hand to reach out to touch Walter's neck, her bloody fingertips leaving smudges against his skin. His heartbeat sputters, then gives. Peter returns then with Walter's medical bag as he drops next to Olivia. He has a vial clasped tightly in his hand as the other fumbles through the contents of the bag. Olivia knows what it is as soon as she sees it, the color makes it hard not to recognize. _

"_What are you doing?" Olivia asks when Peter pulls out an empty syringe from the depths of the bag. Peter doesn't answer; ignores her, focusing his attention on the pinkish liquid so he can guide the needle of the syringe into Walter's concoction. Olivia grips Peter's wrist, the needle frozen._

"_Peter, you can't." She says._

"_This isn't up for discussion." Peter growls in response, the veins in his arm bulging. He pushes the needle through the lip of the vial. _

Olivia quickens her gait, her heart hammering as she watches Peter's legs move, swinging forward to carry him; the determination set firm with each footfall. If he's tired, he doesn't show it, _hasn't shown it_ since they packed as much as they could carry and started their desperate voyage.

"Peter," Olivia calls, feeling his emotions prickle as she hoofs it to catch up with him. Peter's halt is abrupt, sprung tight like it physically pains him to remain rooted to one spot for any length of time. She reaches out for him under the canopy of the crumbling buildings on the outskirts of Boston, unable to take his silence any more. He steps away from her reach.

"_We don't even know if it will work." Olivia says as the syringe fills with the washed-out pink liquid. Walter's chest suddenly erupts in wet, violent coughs and Olivia has to make sure his arm doesn't come loose of her grip. Blood pools in Walter's mouth, dribbling over his chin and Olivia finally lets go, curling her nails to stab into the pads of her hands. Peter's fingers flick against the side of the needle, releasing any air; swallowing rapidly._

"_It's the only one," Olivia says beside him, wiping her bloody hands onto her sweatpants in long streaks, "we can't replicate it; if it doesn't work-" _

_The words freeze Peter's frenzied movements for the first time since the shapeshifters first broke in; his hesitation permeating his otherwise brazen confidence._

"_If we lose Walter," Peter's words lack bite, but they sting Olivia anyway. "There is no hope for any of us." His eyes soften for the briefest of moments before the wet intake of breath from a surviving shapeshifter croons from somewhere from inside the lab and it shatters, Peter's eyes dipping back into inky blackness. _

_Walter's head jerks violently into the cement of the wall, the little hollow thumping masked by the ragged breaths he wheezes through the blood he's breathing. Instinctively, Olivia reaches out, not to Walter but for the pipe beside her before she even makes the conscious decision to do so. Peter notices too, and his response is immediate._

_Peter reaches the pipe first, his face dark and violent and coiled for attack. He grips her hand with fierce ferocity, freezing it there. Everything's clenched: his arms, his back, the meat of his thighs under his jeans. It's like he's trying to keep himself from erupting. _

_The look on Peter's face is heavy with betrayal, stabbing Olivia and she opens her hand under Peter's hold. Walter hisses as his back twists and bends and Peter's face crumbles in resignation. He lets go of Olivia's hand. _

_Neither one of them expects Astrid, who's been silent the entire time, to stand; neither one of them realizes when her soft steps padding over to bring her to watch in horror as Walter's face freezes in pain as the virus begins to spread._

_But they both feel it when Astrid pushes between them, grabbing the syringe in Peter's hand and shoving them aside to raise it high over her head, tightly clasped in her hand as she plunges their one and only experimental cure into Walter's chest. _

_Olivia's mouth is frozen open, not daring to look to Peter; his shock flittering as Astrid pushes the plunger all the way down, the pink disappearing into the flannel of Walter's pajama top. Walter's jerking stops; his face slackens as Astrid's heavy breathing shakes her shoulders._

_Without a word, Astrid lifts up from her place between Peter and Olivia, picking up Olivia's pipe to disappear down to the first level of the lab, the hissing of the surviving shapeshifter muffled by the heavy thud of pipe cracking against skin and bone. Over, and over, and over again. It doesn't muffle the high sobs, Astrid's agony seeping through her as the clattering thuds continue even though the shapeshifter is probably long since dead. _

_It takes Peter two hours, three different sewing needles and an entire bottle of some of their private reserve alcohol to repair the sizable tear in Walter's forearm amidst the backdrop of bloodied corpses. _

_After they carry the mass of dead shapeshifters to their growing wall outside Harvard and Peter reinstates the alarm system while Astrid welds the front door back together. Peter and Olivia leave the next day for Massive Dynamic. _

They take with them two vials of Walter's blood; split between them, _just in case_ and whatever provisions they can carry.

Astrid stays behind with Walter.

"I'm sorry," Olivia says to Peter, her arm outstretched to the space he was standing before he stepped out of her reach. "Massive Dynamic hopefully can synthesize something useful from Walter's blood. We can get back to him." Her hope is farfetched. He knows she's faking her optimism even without the benefit of sensing her emotions like she can his. He chews on the inside of his mouth, trying very hard to ignore her.

"Walter won't be alive by then." Peter finally says, talking for the first time in hours. His voice is rough. Olivia bristles.

"You don't know that." Olivia retorts, taking another tentative step closer. Peter's sneer in retort looks downright malicious.

"No, no I don't know." He starts, his hands shoving into his pockets, "but we know that whatever antidote Walter manufactured, it wasn't enough to reverse his condition." He's surprised that his voice is relatively even. Olivia's hand drops and he hates that he blames her. He just does.

"As far as we know the antidote will only delay it a few days, maybe a few weeks. Maybe he's already one of them, shuffling around the lab trying to eat Astrid's brain." Peter's voice lowers with each passing word, his desperation drifting into the stale air.

"You can't know that. Maybe whatever Walter created slows the process enough for us to get to Massive Dynamic. Maybe there's already a cure—" Olivia tries, but Peter shakes off her argument.

"Walter's going to either turn into one of those things or he's going to die," Peter shouts. "Which is better, Olivia? Do I hope that he turns into a zombie so we can pipe him to death when Massive Dynamic turns out to be a fucking waste of time, or do I hope he dies outright so I don't have to watch you crush his skull when my back's turned?"

Peter's chest is heaving, the words billowing up over the last few days, but he doesn't feel better. He thought he might, but he just feels…old. Olivia's face is crestfallen, and he wishes he could say something to make her feel better, to make them both feel better. But he doesn't know how, so he won't let himself.

So he walks.

"Peter." She calls. He stops.

"I wouldn't have," her voice is small, broken. "I won't." He closes his eyes against the image of her with the pipe and the bookkeeper. He bites sharply on his lip and nods, tasting the hint of blood.

"I know." He gives, and they walk on.

She knows he's lying.


	20. Boston to New York, Part 1

A/N: Sorry this is late. My obsessive checking of Twitter for renewal news is really cutting into my writing time. Fingers crossed for a season 5 so I don't have to light my laptop on fire for wasting the last seven months of my life. Many thanks to Ninja Pirate for the EXTENSIVE commentary and editing, as well as everyone still reading after SEVEN MONTHS:)

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><p>Peter doesn't discuss feelings.<p>

It's probably one of the reasons why most of the women in his life were one night stands. That was an easy life to have; made sense to him.

Typically, when he got to the point in a relationship where the discussion of feelings was necessary, that was the point where he packed up and headed for a new hemisphere. That was who he was. At least, it was who he thought he was.

From the moment he was wedged back into the family he never wanted, and frankly spent most of his adult life running away from, he knew he was in trouble. _She_ was trouble. Her pony tail and girly freckles, the no-nonsense attitude and the way he could just tell with absolute certainty that she could kick the shit out of him. And it all paled in contrast to the leggy waitresses and grad students he often sought out for company.

Before Olivia, he was certain he wasn't capable of sincere feelings; he could read people, manipulate them and take advantage of them, but he never could bring himself to feel something for them. It was much easier to think of people as social experiments: a series of equations that were reactive under the right stimulus. And Peter knew exactly how to push the right buttons.

Everything about Olivia screamed WARNING: DO NOT ENGAGE; but against his better judgment he listened to her sob story. Let her strong-arm him into returning to Boston, into bailing Walter out of Saint Claire's and into a routine he never thought he wanted.

If he was being honest with himself, he knew he was fucked. He desperately didn't want to lose his family, even in a crumbling post-apocalyptic world. And he doesn't want to lose Olivia to it. And when he was on the verge of losing it; watching as the Resister's gun was pointed at Olivia's head, seeing the shapeshifter move toward Olivia in the lab when she wasn't paying attention, watching Walter's skin tremble with the virus as it wrecked his nervous system—that was the moment when he knew he had to choose. And now he's living with the ramifications of his decision.

He doesn't sleep.

They travel early and make camp before sunset; most of the time in dilapidated houses, once outside when they couldn't find shelter. They sleep apart, which is difficult for him, and he watches from his corner as she falls asleep, eyes drifting and arms curled around herself for warmth, but he can't bring himself to join her in sleep, even if he's beyond exhausted. He just can't.

He knows his silence is painful to her; his avoidance, but he can't bring himself to look at her without seeing Walter's face: his bewildered fear and Olivia's hand on the pipe. The shiver that shoots up his spine jerks him from whatever restless in-between he's fallen into against the wall in the crumbling home they've squatted in on the outskirts of Boston. He blinks a few times, the images evaporating like smoke as he cajoles himself awake. He catches Olivia's green eyes staring back, illuminated even in darkness, so he closes his eyes and concentrates on evening out his breathing.

"I know you're not asleep." Olivia's voice breaks the silence Peter's hiding in and he's tempted to keep pretending just to avoid her.

"I know you haven't been sleeping." She amends as an afterthought, and he finally gives up. Her face is soft, eyebrow quirked, telling him she knows he's full of shit. So he gives up and scoots into a more comfortable position. Her eyes read through him like she's been doing the last couple of days, and he feels his skin itch under his layers of clothing.

"How long do you think you can go before dropping dead?" she asks with the same tone she used when she'd ask him if he wanted sugar or cream in his coffee.

He doesn't know how to respond. That's probably the point.

Her eyes are tired but full of questions, like something's on her mind but she doesn't say what it is. Instead, she lifts herself out of the curled position against the opposite wall of the small living room and walks to where he is, plopping down beside him without asking for an invitation. Her arm is warm against his, her scent familiar, and his stomach aches with _how it used to be_. His throat is thick as he tries to swallow it down, staring at his hands in the darkness.

There's the taste of her hurt on the tip of his tongue, and he knows she has questions. Has explanations. And it would be too easy to wrap his arm around her shoulder, to let her take some of the burden. But he wants to just reach out and feel her firm and whole and warm under his fingertips.

"Peter," she finally says after they both tire of listening to the sounds of the house. Like that, the warmth's gone and he's reminded they're in someone else's home. Probably a dead somebody.

"There's nothing to talk about." He snaps. The look on her face makes him tread backward to soften the anger he knows she doesn't understand.

"I'm fine." He says, his voice a few octaves lower, settling himself back a few discreet inches apart from her. Olivia's jaw sets, her lips pursing as she pretends to not notice his retreat. He expects her to call him on it, to start screaming and swinging like she's done in the past. Instead, she reaches for her pack with a steady hand, opening it and rustling around in the contents inside.

"Hungry?" she asks, pulling out a sleeve of saltine crackers. Peter's stomach rumbles.

"I'm okay," he says, closing his eyes. There's the shuffling of plastic as she puts them away and he feels the emptiness of her moving away from him but doesn't bother to reopen his eyes.

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><p>There are abandoned cars for stretches of miles on either side of the highway. Some are pushed off onto the shoulder, some crumpled into one another, forgotten and broken and useless.<p>

Peter finds the crackers she stowed in his pack as he's looking for water, nestled gently between his canteen and an extra pair of dry socks as they're making their way across the deserted highway. He's kneeling down between the bumper of an old Chevy and a rusted Chrysler, suddenly homesick for Walter's Plymouth and the earthly, moldy smell of the upholstery. He skims his fingers along the outer edge of a stale cracker, eyes locking onto Olivia as she rifles through another car a few feet away, tossing wads of trash over her shoulder as she tries to find something useful.

Their silence has turned from avoidance into resentment; Peter's lungs punched of air every time he's reminded of the shapeshifter inside the lab with the flannel nightgown. It was so close to her it could reach its fingers out toward her neck, and everything would have ended for him. Something burned from deep inside his chest, incinerating him from the inside out and he snapped. He heard Astrid crying out Walter's name; he just didn't care. His entire focus was clouded by Olivia's impassive face and everything else just became white noise and he could only think one thing:

_Anyone but her. _

"Check it out," Olivia says, startling Peter who shoves the crackers deep into the caverns of his bag. He looks up to see a bottle of orange Gatorade hovering a few inches from his face.

"Jackpot." She says with a smile as he takes the bottle from her, running his thumb across the label. He twists it open and the smell hits him even before he takes a drink. The sugar hits his stomach and he gulps a little as he forgets to breathe.

"Where's yours?" he asks after he gets through half of it, sputtering a little as he attempts to catch his breath.

Olivia smiles as she adjusts the strap on her bag, turning back to the stretch of highway.

"I don't like the orange." She says as she goes.

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><p>The sun is hot overhead as they march together; the pavement sizzling and Peter can almost see the heat rippling from the asphalt. He's delirious, four days of excessive walking with no food and little water and almost zero sleep and he's starting to feel it in each of his limbs. He stays ahead of Olivia, keeping distance and avoiding eye contact.<p>

He hasn't touched the crackers.

He's pretty good at keeping the images of her at bay; the zombie face with snapping mouth he can picture with acute clarity. He finally gave into sleep for a few hours the previous night in the cab of a pickup and awoke viciously, kicking and gasping, the image of Olivia digging her teeth into Walter's neck as he stood aside and watched still burnt into his retinas. He gave up trying the rest of the night, watching the sun rise bleed over the horizon as Olivia slept next to him.

Even when he's awake, it's hard not to picture her as a zombie. Or Walter. Or Astrid. Sometimes when he's feeling particularly masochistic, he imagines them all together, shuffling around the ruins of the lab, bumping into each other as their rotting skin peels away from their skulls.

It's easier to divert his focus to Olivia's bare back instead. The subtle slope of her shoulders and the pebble of vertebrae under skin. The warmth of her skin against his chest as falls asleep. He misses the lab, misses the lumpy bed they share together and the soft breaths against his ear. He misses her even though she's only ten feet away.

"Peter!" her voice pops the little bubble he's in, feels her fingers in his arm as she grabs him. He yelps in surprise, finding her eyes wide and cheeks flushed like she's been calling his name for hours. He tries to say something, but she clamps her hand over his mouth, scrabbling her fingers into his arms to drag him to his knees.

"Shhh," she whispers, breath blowing against his face when he tries to protest. He sags against the twisted door of a Buick, his eyes following Olivia's pointed hand. She finally moves her hand against his face when he sees it too.

There's a shapeshifter a few feet away from where Peter was headed, a younger boy; maybe fourteen or fifteen with mussed brown hair and half his face eaten away.

It's by itself, shuffling through the mousetrap of cars, fingers scratching against the paint of cars it passes.

"It's just the one." Peter's whisper is harsh, hand already fumbling for his crowbar. Olivia's brow furrows, her hand poised over his, her face intense. She juts her chin out for him to look again.

"That might draw some unwanted attention." She says.

His neck prickles as a charge shoots straight up his spine under her gaze. He scoots to get a better look over the side of the car, feeling a little light-headed. The boy isn't the only one; there are about a dozen dragging shifters in tow less than a mile behind, traveling together. The hold on the crowbar slackens as Peter's mouth goes dry.

Olivia pulls on his sleeve, pulling him silently behind her as they move to the opposite end of the car, out of the sightline of the shapeshifter, crouching low.

A gust of hot wind skims along Peter's too long hair, tickling his neck as the sun beats down on them. The shapeshifter tilts its head to where they're hiding and stops, the low rumbling of the same bullfrog noise cranking out of its throat and Olivia's breathing picks up beside him. The shapeshifter's jaw opens and snaps shut but he stands still. Peter's eyes trace the rows of cars ahead of them, the pack of shapeshifters slowly catching up to where the boy stands. Peter cranes his neck on either side of their hiding place, his eyes landing on a camper a few cars down.

Peter turns and finds Olivia's face utterly blank beside him, watching the shapeshifter change directions to drag itself over to their direction. He touches her cheek and she comes back to him, eyes clear and alert as he motions over to the camper. She nods and they shuffle to it; crouching low and fumbling along the sides of cars as they attempt to outrun the shapeshifter before the other's catch up as it climbs through the maze to get to them.

They stop on the passenger side of the camper, Olivia's hands against his back as Peter sneaks a peek over the corner before they make a break for the door on the opposite side. The shapeshifter's stopped again, head jerking around on its neck, trying to pinpoint them. It opens what's left of its mouth and croaks again. There's an answering croak from somewhere in the distance and Olivia's hands tighten in Peter's coat.

"It smells us." Olivia whispers against Peter's neck. Peter nods.

"Probably how they found us in the lab." He mutters. The shapeshifter turns west, taking a few steps in the opposite direction and Peter moves, dragging Olivia behind him to the door of the cab, opening with a grateful sigh that it's not locked and shoves Olivia ahead of him before sliding in and closing the door behind him with a click before the wind changes direction.

The air inside the camper is stale; musty smelling from being poorly ventilated and left out in the sun too long. There's not much room inside, in fact, it's so cramped that the twin bed takes up most the interior; a small slab of counter with a sink takes up the rest. From the rustic out-of-date decor, it looks like it's been abandoned since the eighties.

Peter and Olivia are crumbled on the floor, Peter's knees lightly grazing the peeling veneer of the cabinetry as he squats, his pack pinching into his skin as he tries to maneuver his limbs around Olivia's.

"Ugh, what's that smell?" Olivia whispers as she tries to adjust her knees from jabbing into Peter's side. Peter smells it too, grimacing when he recognizes the acidic scent of piss and waste.

"It's probably better if you don't think too hard about it." He responds, and the revulsion registering on Olivia's face almost makes Peter laugh. She twists away from the smell, which is everywhere, muttering "disgusting," when she gives up to finally sag against the sink. Peter does let out a rueful chuckle at her exasperation, letting it hiss through his chest.

"You're the one who wanted to leave the lab." He teases before he realizes what he says. Olivia's face pales and Peter bites his tongue. Walter flashes before his eyes and he suddenly can't look at her again, instead pulling back the worn brown curtain to check outside.

The teenage shapeshifter wanders aimlessly around cars outside; Peter thinks that the smell inside the cab might prove to be at least beneficial, even if it's downright putrid.

"And the others?" Olivia asks before Peter says anything, and he responds with a shrug; the group of shifters continuing down the web of cars without any indication that they've been spotted. Something clicks inside Peter's head.

"But you already know that." He says. He releases the curtain to fall back over the grimy window. "How do you know that?" Olivia's face looks guilty, eyes cast down to the specks under her nails.

"You're easy to read." Olivia says, sliding the pack off her back to toss on the bed. The smell wafts and Peter's stomach churns as it disturbs the air inside the cab. He tries to not take deep breaths, leaning back against the frame to twist the stiffness out of his ankles.

"No, I'm not." Peter challenges and that earns him an acid-laced glare from Olivia and he knows she's hiding something. He's just not sure how long she's been hiding it.

"Olivia," he says as he leans forward, trying to get a handle on her. She takes a breath, opening her mouth and settling her thoughts.

There's a scratch against the exterior outside, a long whining screech like metal twisting together and Peter lurches away from the noise, arms on either side of Olivia's head as he braces himself against the cabinets she's backed against. Olivia's mouth opens against his neck.

The sound outside cuts off almost as quickly as it began, replaced with the wet gurgles of the shapeshifter pressing its jaw against the window Peter was just looking through, the wet puffs seeping between glass and metal as it tries to breathe in their scent.

Olivia's hands bury in Peter's coat, her eyes squeezing shut as the sound of the shapeshifter continues down the cab of the truck, the sound of scraping metal erupting once again as it drags a hand down the paint as it walks on. Peter doesn't move. Olivia doesn't release her hold on his coat. He looks down as she looks up, and he suddenly wishes he'd eaten the goddamned crackers.


	21. Boston to New York, Part 2

A/N: So, I know I missed last week's update. I got to a certain point (after my seven month meltdown) and had to take a step back to take a breath. Thank you to everyone for the "gentle nudges" and the continued support this story gets Big fat THANK YOU! To Inner Peter for providing the stellar line I was stuck on and for being just a bad ass in  
>general.<p>

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><p>When she was seventeen, Olivia went to a fortune teller, dragged there by her younger sister Rachel. It was in an old house off the highway that Olivia remembered was once a flower shop; the air dense with the musky smell of incense and cat piss (and though she didn't mention it to Rachel, <em>weed<em>) every bare wall covered with old velvet tapestries in rich purples that made Olivia wonder what was hiding behind them.

"C'mon Liv, don't you want to know your future?" Rachel squealed through wagging mystical spirit fingers in front of her face as they waited for Madam Rogue to share her divine secrets of the universe. Olivia had just smiled as Rachel was lead to the backroom by a woman trying and failing in her impersonation of Stevie Nicks, her black dress billowing behind her as she walked, rolling her eyes and slouching in her chair to wait her turn. She was never very good at waiting, so she did what she always did when she was forced to sit still: she observed.

She wandered around the small space, the twangy melody of new age music sweeping through ancient speakers, touching all the little figurines that lined the shelves, leaving fingerprints in the dust on the hanging tapestries. She pushed a particularly garish one aside and let out a shriek of surprise when a matted black cat dashed between her ankles it to disappear into another veiled corner. She stopped investigating after that.

After fifteen minutes, Rachel bundled out, her face animated as she told Olivia about all the boys in her future, the babies and the carefree life she's going to lead.

When Olivia's lead back, the woman sat her down in a room lit entirely by candlelight and closed the door behind her, shutting her in. With worn cards shuffling between her hands, she inspected Olivia under false eyelashes, the air thick with more stink of weed and piss, a smirk on her weathered face that instantly annoyed Olivia.

"So how many kids am I gonna pop out?" Olivia asked her tritely, already bored and wanting desperately to be in fresh air again.

The woman's smirk faded as she flipped over the first card: a skeleton dressed in black robes standing over a small child, the rising sun behind the figures washed out by age. After a second, the woman spoke as if she were reciting a memorized script:

"Having left the tree from where he hung, the Fool moves carefully through a fallow field, head still clearing from the visions." Olivia sat silently as she listened. "The air is cold and wintry, the trees bare. He knows he has started on his spiritual journey in earnest, but feels strangely empty and profoundly sad, as if he has lost something."

Olivia couldn't help but roll her eyes then.

"Olivia Dunham," the woman said, even though Olivia knew she'd never mentioned her name before. "You sacrificed your old world, your old self. Both are gone, dead."

"So I'm fated to become the Fool?" Olivia asked.

"No, Olivia," the woman's painted lips curled. "You are fated to die."

* * *

><p>The young shapeshifter continues on its merry way, and from the sounds of it, taking a strip of paint with it as a consolation. Olivia's got her hands buried deep in Peter's coat, the smell of urine heavy in the air as the heat beats down on the tin box they're hiding in.<p>

She's not sure why being trapped in the camper brings up inexplicable memories of the fortune teller: the seedy room with velvet tapestries and cat piss and weed and the woman with lipstick stained on her teeth. When Peter lets out a heady breath against the crook of her neck, she shoves it back down and dismisses it. She's left only with the vague remembrance that to this day she still hates cats.

Peter's hands skirt across her elbows, the heat from his mouth too close to her skin as the shapeshifter's shadow fades against the metal of the doors. Olivia doesn't need the absence of sound to tell her that the boy's moved on and the others are not far behind him are still too far away to pick up their scent over the stench of fried piss. There's a prickling of consciousness trickling in over the frequency of Peter and his ever steady wave of misfired resentment; nothing helpful, really, other than the foggy acknowledgement that they're out there.

It's getting hard to concentrate on anything, the closer she is in proximity to him, the harder it is to concentrate on anything else.

Peter's taste is eclectic, his feelings fine-tuned and flavored on her practiced tongue. She's gotten good at zeroing in on him; during the last couple days of his avoidance she's taken to pushing him out while withstanding the urge to set him on fire. It's curious how his anger rubs so easily off on her, his grief, and especially, she noticed, his stubbornness. His head pulls back as he talks to her, lips moving urgently and she watches him without really hearing what he's saying.

"…wait them out," is all she catches at the end of Peter's train of thought for whatever plan he's set out for them. Her brow furrows as she withdraws her hands from his coat. It's the most words he's spoken at one time to her since they left Harvard.

"What?" she says when she realizes that he's waiting for some sort of response. He's impossibly close, practically breathing in her air and she feels something shift in the space between them.

"What is it?" he asks gently, his eyes hanging on each finite detail of her face, trying to discern her microexpressions in the fractions of seconds that she uses to try to blot him out completely. Her smile is tight before melting away, the creeping fear that _he knows _settling in her chest_. _

Peter takes a deep breath, and she feels his resignation before she sees it in his face. He rakes his fingers through his hair, pushing it off his forehead as he shifts his focus away from her face.

"Listen," he says, "I know this is difficult for you, too." He tells her in a hurry, his hair sticking up in little tuffs where he's mussed with it. "I know_ I've_ been difficult." He smirks even though it's not really funny. Olivia doesn't move a muscle, her face perfectly passive.

"I just need some time to—" Peter starts and that pretty much does it for her.

"Time to what?" Olivia asks, her heart hammering in her chest as she straightens her back and shoulders, arching against the peeling laminate of the cabinet. She takes advantage of the position they're in, trapped together in a tin box until the shapeshifters are far enough away for them to make a run for it off the highway. She knows they have time to kill from the aimless direction the shifters are taking. And she knows that if there's one thing that Peter Bishop hates, it's being backed against a wall.

_Good, _she thinks.

His lips pull down at the corners as he begins to reset his thoughts. Olivia doesn't let him.

"How much time do you need, exactly?" her voice is razor sharp, cutting through the heat surrounding them. Peter chews on his lip, his flash of fury a rocket ship tumbling its way toward her. She recycles it, lets it fuel her as she gears up for the fight she knows is imminent. The little sliver of everything she's been trapped with pumps up her chest and into her mouth to spit back at him. Everything.

"You're not the only one who's lost someone close to them." She snaps. "It's not exactly an exclusive club."

Peter's stomach lets out from under his chest.

"Olivia," he begins.

"I care about him too." Olivia continues, not letting Peter have a single breath to refute. "And despite what you think you know about me, you don't know ANYTHING if you think that I would have done _that." _ Up until that point, she'd been doing well. Shifting through her anger like the gritty bits of gravel was an easy emotion to work through; thinking about Walter and his terrified face, however, is not.

Peter's shocked into silence, her words icy cold against his cheeks.

"I know what you think of me." Olivia's voice is softer. "From that moment in the lab, I knew everything changed." She looks away from Peter's stormy eyes. She can feel his desire to reach out and it's stifling when his hands remain clenched on either side of his hips.

"Olivia," he finally says, his voice without the acid from before.

"You see him, don't you? When you look at me."

No answer.

And then there's nothing else for her to say.

There's the croak out in the distance from one of the shapeshifters, and they both jump at the break in their silence. Peter hasn't stopped staring at her.

"I took my eyes off Walter." His voice is whisper-soft when he finally admits it. So soft in fact that Olivia isn't sure if he uttered the words or she's able to read his thoughts now. She waits for him to continue; despite the look on his face telling her he isn't keen on doing so.

"In the lab," he says after a long time, "it was just for a moment and it was because of you." His voice is teeming on resigned anger, his hands clenching and unclenching like he's ready to fight. Her eyebrows knit together, mind reeling back to the terror at the lab. She remembers watching the shapeshifter as it stalked toward Walter's unknowing face. Her failure as Peter screamed for her to save him, and the shame she still feels that she couldn't.

"I don't understand." She admits, his grief is pushing in on her, filling the small space of the cab and she feels like she's stepping into the cold water of the tank for the first time: exhilaration at the unknown, but half-naked and out of her fucking mind with terror.

His hands curl in on themselves in Peter's lap, and she's for a moment distracted. Those long fingers that she's dedicated more than one lewd fantasy throughout their working relationship; long and purposeful and agile even for someone who found himself the happiest when they were covered in grease. She wants to reach out to take them, lace her fingers between the spaces to fill them in, but she remains completely still.

"I watched you." Peter's voice flits into her consciousness, his hands balling again. Olivia has to physically bring herself to drag her gaze away from those hands and onto Peter's face, something new fluttering from his emotions that she's not quite used to.

"When that shapeshifter," he manages through a tight throat, his voice strained. He takes another breath to swallow down all the things he needs to say. "When it was that close to you, when you didn't see it, I took my eyes off Walter. Frankly, I didn't care about Walter. About my _own father." _He amends and lets out a strangled laugh that he can't pull off, his chest burning.

"I didn't want you to be taken from me."

Olivia feels the temperature drop a few degrees as she puts together his grief and the words he's telling her. He's too bright, the air too stale and she's covering her mouth with her hand even though she doesn't remember the action of doing so.

"It was my choice," he mutters, his voice breaking under the strain of uttering the words aloud, "I let my father die to save you. And now I'm going to let him die again because there's nothing I can do to save him."

She doesn't bother to try to tell him that there's still a chance to save Walter, to save everyone. Even though she believes it with every fiber of her being, she knows that It's beside the point. She's stifled into silence at the naked honesty that Peter's telling her. Practically shouting at her.

"You made the wrong choice." She finishes for him.

It feels like he shot her in the chest with a rifle.

Peter's movement is swift as he reaches for her face, capturing her cheeks between his palms to force her undivided attention.

"Olivia," his breath is hot on her face. "I made the only choice I _could_ make." Olivia stares dumbly at him, mouth hanging open and tasting him on the tip of her tongue.

Then he pulls back into his corner, hands balled again and her cheeks are cold from the absence of his skin on her. Olivia shifts forward, reaching out to take his hands in her own and feeling the flush of his emotion as they loosen under her grip.

"There's nothing you could have done." She mutters.

He nods; eyes glassy as he pulls away from her gaze.

There are the outlines of shadows from the shapeshifters as they pass the cab, the quiet gurgle of breath that forces them to hunker low, all conversation halting even though there's so much more that Olivia wants to say. They watch them pass, or rather, Peter watches them and Olivia watches Peter. Watches the curve of his mouth as his teeth grind together, the meaning behind the words he shared.

She shifts, quiet as a cat to maneuver herself onto Peter's startled lap, slipping her hand over his mouth to silence him; his eyes wide as saucers when he looks at her. When she's confident that he won't give away their location to the passing shadows, she removes her hand to replace with her mouth, finding his lips a little unsteady as she presses herself into Peter's lap, her stomach burning when his fingers dig into her hips as he kisses her back.

"Olivia," he shudders when her hands drop from their hold into his jacket to touch his chest. His irises are blasted wide open, and she tastes the exhilarating tang of his excitement as it touches every nerve in her skin.

"Olivia." He says a little more clearly, his hands on either side of her face to gently pull her away to look at him.

"What?" she huffs as his fingers burn into her skin, scorching her.

Peter's black eyes go missing as he cranes his neck back toward the window.

"It's time to run."


	22. Boston to New York, Part 3

A/N: Back on track with Monday postings! Thank you to my awesome collaborator and editor, Pigeon Forge, for the great work as usual and for finding the good break to keep this chapter from being HUGE. Thanks to everyone reading and, as always, all feedback welcomed.

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><p>Peter's not sure how he'd managed the strength to pull Olivia away, and quite frankly, he almost didn't. Not with her fingers digging into his chest and her weight sitting so extraordinarily on top of his lap. The way she kisses shocks his chest like she's made of lighting and he's a giant metal conductor finely tune to her.<p>

"Olivia," he mumbles against her mouth when he hears something peculiar over their uneven breathing. He's able to maneuver a glance at the window and nearly chokes on Olivia's tongue when the outline of a shapeshifter presses its face into the glass window separating them from the outside. She shifts her hips suddenly against his and he sucks in air and almost forgets the shapeshifter. He turns his head to the side to warn her, but she finds the skin of his jaw.

"Olivia." He tries again, pushing her gently away with his palms against her cheeks. Her frustration is evident as the flush on her cheeks deepens and her fingers dig harder into his shirt, twisting the material.

"What?" she asks.

"It's time to run." He says as evenly as possible, Olivia's are eyes first shocked then narrowing like she's concentrating hard on something.

"It's the only one," she whispers as she climbs off Peter's lap. She pulls the pipe out of the side compartment of her bag back to business as she slides the pack back across her shoulders. Peter can tell there's something she's keeping from him by the way she's acting, but with a shifter trying to claw its way in, he figures he'll wait for an explanation later.

"The others?" he asks, pulling out his crowbar. Olivia's cheeks are still dyed pink as she pulls herself together, ignoring his questioning look.

"Probably a mile." She mutters. "It'll attract others, though."Peter's up and bracing against Olivia as he listens to the scratching from outside, readying himself. Olivia's breath evens out as she feels Peter's focus zero in and she matches his level of intensity as she waits.

"Now," she says against the scruff of hair on his neck.

There's a flash of Peter's back moving, the shifting of his weight as it alternates on his hips as he swings a kick into the middle of the steel door, exploding it off the hinges and straight into the face of the shapeshifter outside.

He's out the door with the crowbar swinging to connect with the shapeshifter's skull before it has a chance to make a sound. Blood and mercury splatter in every direction and he takes another powerful swing down to finish the job. It drops to its knees before toppling over; its head bouncing off the asphalt before Peter even looks at it.

When he finally does, he wishes he hadn't.

It's older, its grayish hair poking out along the sides of its mutilated face and Peter freezes; his stomach seizing as Walter's face leaps into his consciousness to choke him.

Olivia's scouting their surroundings, finding the trickling heads of the rest of the pack as they continue undisturbed on their way when she feels Peter's panic bubble into hysteria. She looks down and sees the grey hair, feels Peter's debilitating terror so she grabs Peter's collar and yanks.

"It's not him!" she hisses out as Peter remains motionless, sinking to his knees and rock solid against Olivia's pulling. All it would take is one of the shapeshifters from the pack to turn around and then they're fucked.

"We have to get off the highway now." She nearly shouts, debating knocking him out with the pipe to drag his ass off the road. She finally places his emotion as she's frantically trying not to make sound.

"Peter, it's not Walter." She feels him prickle at the name. "It's not him!" she finally shouts and she slides all her weight to pull him numbly to his feet. She takes the crowbar from his hands to slide it into her belt before turning to run like hell, her fingers digging into his wrist to make sure he doesn't fall behind. After a few false starts he follows, leaving behind the shapeshifter.

The blood pounds furiously between Peter's temples as he swallows down the sickness that's creeping up his throat as they stumble from the blacktop of the crumbling highway and onto the dusty terrain of dead, overgrown foilage toward the outline of buildings not far beyond the horizon.

Peter's feeling a little delirious, the mixture of fresh air, the adrenaline of killing the Walter-looking shapeshifter and Olivia's face in reaction to his declaration all pushing for space inside his head. She's let go of his wrist, confident he'll keep up as they race through the overhang of trees that are still rooted on either side of them as they skim by in blurs.

They pass the remnants of what used to be a children's park; the open field blackened and washed free of the colors they used to be painted, the rusted bones of the old playground equipment the only clues that this used to be a happy place. They duck around the remnants, Peter picking up speed to launch himself through the open clearing, the ominous landscape of calamity something he wants to get through quickly.

Olivia trips over a turned bar that used to belong to a swing set and Peter grabs hold of her arm before she has time to lose a step, dragging her behind him now as they pass the park. He feels eyes on his back, like there are people watching from beyond what they can see from the brush line.

Once they're sheltered under the low overhanging branches of dead trees beyond the park they finally stop, Peter gripping his shaking knees to catch his breath. He can feel Olivia looking at him even as she puffs through her own ragged breathing. He turns to open his mouth to ask what she's doing but she's faster than he is, stomping over to where he's hunched and he thinks wildly for a moment she might punch him again.

She tackles him, arms snaking around his middle as she crushes her lips into his. Peter's a little off- balanced, stumbling backward and into the trunk of an old maple tree as Olivia works on undoing the buttons on his coat.

"Liv," he's barely able to choke out as she makes it through the first layer easily, trying to push off his coat but getting stuck where his pack is still secured around his back. When he finally catches up to what she wants, tastes the heated intensity of her kiss he breaks away long enough to peel the strap from over his neck to drop it to the ground as he finds her lips again, returning her fever. He helps her shuck his coat off completely, his fingers tangling into the threads of her hair as he kisses her fiercely as she backs him into the bark. He feels her heated skin radiating against his chest as she fights with the buttons on his shirt.

"I never would have taken you as such an outdoorsy type." he says breathlessly and earns a nip on his neck hard enough to draw blood.

"Christ, 'Livia." he yelps, twisting from her lips as they trail their way to skim past his neck to the ridge of his collarbone, running her tongue across the fabric of his undershirt. There are things that Peter rapidly thinks he should tell her, some elaboration of his guilt and fears from before, but when Olivia grinds her hips against him, his racing thoughts screech to a stop. He takes it as a good sign of her forgiveness. The irony of their role reversal isn't lost on him as she pushes him harder into the tree, and he has to dig his heels into dry earth to keep from slipping. Neither is the fact that there appears to be a clear connection between them almost tearing each other's faces off, to one of them close to being murdered to end up mauling each other as they struggle to rid themselves of clothing.

Not that he minds the mauling, per se.

Olivia doesn't have time for words, feeding off the widening shock of Peter's desire that's wilting through her stomach as he finally drops his hands from crushing her face to his to help her pull her own pack over her head. Peter's fingers are much more agile, twisting the buttons on her coat to tear the fabric from her shoulders to land at her feet.

The air is still warm from the afternoon sun as it settles around them, warming her back as Peter pulls the remaining layers of clothing over her head and drops his face into her shoulder, pulling her flush against his chest to let her warm him too. Her fingers stop their urgent mission, letting Peter pull her in for a rare sign of affirmation. Her fingers skim through the worn cotton of his undershirt, making invisible pictures over the place where he heart is instead. He pulls back enough to look at her, his eyes dark as he skims down to look at her doodling hand, placing his on top to still it.

"Olivia," he starts but Olivia doesn't let him finish his thought. Instead, she reaches on tiptoe to place her lips back to his, soft and earnest and it gives him goose bumps in its restraint.

"Tell me," she mumbles when she's effectively silenced him with the tip of her tongue. "Why you always insist on talking during these moments?" she smiles into the kiss and pulls the hem of his flannel and undershirt over his head as he lifts his hands to help her strip him.

She starts in on his jeans and he stops her again.

"No, wait." he says, pulling back for a moment as he lowers to his knees skimming his lips across her abdomen as he goes, forcing her to stand motionless with two well-placed hands on her forearms. When he reaches the top of her jeans, she lets out an unsteady breath and his smile is warm against her stomach.

He grabs his abandoned wool pea coat and drops down on top of it, folding her down on top of him as he goes.

"Always the gentleman," she mumbles sarcastically as he makes easy work of her jeans so she can kick them off. Peter's a barely contained stick of TNT, her skin ivory pale in the sunlight as she hovers over him. She doesn't look shy as she strips him; instead, she looks like a goddamned animal as she works through his jeans to yank them down his hips. And fuck, does it turns him on even more.

She's boiling hot, every nerve on fire as she kisses him again, feeling his hands on her hips, guiding her, digging into her skin as she scrabbles to place herself over him to sink down and Peter surges forward, his forehead wet against her chest.

"Fuck," he hisses into her skin as she moves, his back settling against the overgrown trunk, his shoulders hunched forward as his hands come to rest in her hair to pull her in to kiss again as her hips picks up speed, her knees pinching into the sides of his ribs.

He's close, she can tell from the little quickening breaths he's alternating between in their kiss; he's pulling tight on roots of her hair and she revels in the feeling of him saturating every pore in her skin. He finds her eyes right then, filled to the brim of things he'd _never say_ and he comes, eyes squeezing shut and there's a warm feeling rolling down her hip and she follows hard, Peter's face buried against her shoulder.

She's warm, boneless and lethargic as his wet breath evens out across her neck. When he musters the strength, he pulls away from her chest to drop his head with a thud against the trunk of the tree that engulfs them in size, pulling her to his chest.

"I guess this is as normal as we can get." He mutters into her hair, his eyelids heavy. There's a cluck of her response that's muffled by his chest and she reaches to retrieve her clothing, handing him his before sliding into her own. His limbs are heavy as he dresses, the chill settling as the sun disappears behind some clouds.

Olivia settles beside him again, his head dropping to the top of her head as his exhaustion becomes overwhelming and for the first time in days, he falls sleeps with Olivia on his chest.

* * *

><p>He's not sure how long he's been asleep, but the first whispers of twilight have settled around them, Olivia still tucked against his chest, still asleep.<p>

He blinks a few times then digs his fist into his eye to help pull himself from the groggy ditch he's fallen into. He cranes his neck to look at her, brushing his lips across her forehead as he combs his fingers through her hair as it falls over her back and shoulders.

He feels content; the black hole in his chest growing smaller at the smell of her in his skin. He feels her shift, blinking open as she finds him already awake. She doesn't say anything. Neither does he.

There's a crunch in the distance. They freeze against one another, Olivia's eyes squinting into the distance. Then the trunk of the tree above their heads explodes, loud as dynamite and they scrabble to one side. The chunk blown away falls around them like little wooden confetti as Peter grapples for the crowbar that's fallen loose of Olivia's clothing as another round pelts the ground to their right and kicks up dirt.

"Drop it!" a voice rings out as a figure stumbles into view. Both Olivia and Peter freeze as the woman steps out into the clearing, the semi-automatic trained in front of her. She's a big girl, square shouldered like a football player and a severe haircut hidden under an old Red Sox baseball cap.

Peter begrudgingly drops the crowbar and raises his hands. Olivia does the same. The woman appraises the two, eyes shifting back and forth to the remnants of their clothing they hadn't bothered putting back on yet.

"How many more are there of you?" she asks gruffly over the barrel. There's a Jersey accent rolling from her tongue.

"Just us." Olivia answers, still in her kneeling position not far from Peter. The woman swings her gun in her direction and Olivia feels a wave of possessiveness radiating from him.

"We're on our way to Massive Dynamic." Peter goes with honesty to train the focus of the gun away from Olivia. The woman's face doesn't even register the words. She finally curls a lip.

"New York's overrun." She mutters matter of factly, reading them. Olivia's face is defiant, shifting her weight. Bad idea. The gun swings back at her and she clicks the hammer back.

"They're everywhere here, too." The woman continues; her voice lowering to a gruff. "How have you managed to make it out here alive?"

"We're fine on our own." Peter answers, and Olivia's back hurts as it tightens. The woman's smile is grim, twisting her head to the side as she looks over her shoulder. There's something appraising in the way that she looks at Peter. She feels the woman catalogue Peter; his age, the defined features of his arms. This is very bad.

"Put the rest of your clothes on. Let's go." She says to Peter.

Olivia opens her mouth the same time as Peter, but the woman blasts another hole into the already mutilated tree. They cover their ears as the sound echoes in the space.

"Are you fucking crazy?" Peter snarls, his ears ringing. "You're going to attract them to us!"

The woman's eyes narrow into slits. "Or, I can put the next hole in Blondie's leg and leave her for them."

Peter's smile is frightening as it pulls tight. "When do we leave?"


	23. Boom

A/N: So, this was originally written as a x-mas gift to my editor, Zombie Slayer, and it changed the outline of the story so I could fold it into the current plot. So a good chunk of the story has been leading upto this point. :) Thanks again to everyone taking the time to review, and as always, feedback is always welcomed.

* * *

><p>They walk.<p>

The woman's gun is pointed at their backs a few feet behind them, herding them further and further off course to Massive Dynamic with each passing footfall. Olivia can feel Peter's frustration, but it's hard to tell if it's because he's sure they're being ushered into a Resister's camp or that they're wasting time getting to New York.

"You're being recruited." Olivia says, stuffing her hands into her pockets as they successfully make it onto the abandoned street leading into the city. The town surrounded them is washed out like an old photo; sepia toned and from the looks of it, a match-strike away from being reduced to ash. Peter's eyes are tight as he squints against the sun, his shoulders hunched as he takes in Olivia's words. He turns to the woman as she's pushing them down what he remembers is probably close to the outskirts of Connecticut.

"And what about you?" he asks as he glares.

Olivia pops the collar on her coat as a gust of cold wind tickles her neck, whipping her hair into her face and stinging her eyes.

"I think there's a reason we haven't run into a lot of female Resisters." She finally answers.

Peter's hands curl into fists.

"You read minds now?" he asks blandly.

"Enough talking!" The woman shouts at them and Peter's mind feels like a ticking time bomb and they continue in silence. After a few more blocks something catches Olivia's eye; a fuzzy outline of something moving slowly in between the cracks of the old business district.

"We're not alone," she whispers to Peter, tilting her head into the distance behind them. Peter's face stays impassive as he stares ahead, not risking a look for himself. The skin on his back crawls mutinously under his coat as they continue forward.

"And it see us?" he asks.

She nods once, but something else prickles against her spine. A lot of something. She stops, reaching out to stop Peter too, braking against her forearm like a seatbelt. Olivia's face drains of color as her eyes search the empty space around them.

"Move it!" The woman bustles as she catches up, but Olivia stays rooted, her vision blotting with little bright burst of light as she sorts through the sudden intake of emotion, ripping her chest open in huge ragged waves.

"Olivia," Peter says, alarmed as he grabs her shoulder to keep her upright when she staggers. "Olivia, what is it?" There are flecks of dead faces everywhere, fuzzy like a distant memory she can't fully recall, but she knows without a doubt that they're close.

"Didn't you hear me?" The woman hisses as the gun sways from Peter to Olivia.

"Something's wrong!" Peter shouts angrily as Olivia's eyes lose focus in a way that he recognizes. There's something explosive behind her eyes, a fiery spark that he's seen once before in their little bedroom inside the lab as she woke up swinging from the nightmare he didn't understand. The same spark she had when she warned him with a single utterance of Walter's name. The woman clicks back the hammer, keeping her distance as she catches up, pink faced and livid.

"Get that thing out of my face." Peter growls, fingers steel in Olivia's coat as her chest heaves.

Olivia's face is bright-white and panicked as her vision clears, gripping the sides of Peter's coat as she pieces together the bits of images before they fade.

"They're everywhere." Olivia chokes out, eyes wide as she looks at Peter to put together her meaning.

There's a whine in the distance, a crack of noise in the air and the woman changes the direction of her gun. Olivia's vision becomes crystal clear as she pushes hard on Peter, relying more on the engrained training of her former life than conscious thought, to shove Peter into the direction of the exterior brick wall of the building as the sirens blare inside her head to run.

No sooner than the woman turns around the first shapeshifter lunges, and even as they run Peter sees she doesn't have a chance against it, her shot firing blindly as her scream explodes the settled air as the shapeshifter rips its fingers into her throat, tearing her jaw off in one swipe as it digs his face into her neck. The sound of gunshot attracts more shapeshifters, shuffling from around the corners of the building to the gurgling woman as Peter and Olivia plaster themselves against the wall, staying as small of a target as possible as they watch another shapeshifter with a tattered blazer shred through the soft stomach of the woman to pull out long strands of intestine.

"My god," Olivia rattles against Peter's coat, feeling his fingers dig into her arms as they watch a third shifter dig into the guts of the twitching woman who is now splayed on her back as they feed; her backpack laying a few feet away from where they are.

"My crowbar's in her pack," Peter mumbles, detangling himself from Olivia. "I don't think I can get to the gun without them seeing."

He's right—the gun is trampled by shapeshifters as they fall onto the woman's body like ants.

"Which way do we go?" he asks Olivia as she takes in great gulps of air. She listens, trying to pick up between the murmuring of words and the images of dead faces as Peter braces himself.

"Which way?" Peter's voice is firm; demanding and the images clear in Olivia's head.

"North. I think." She says. Peter nods.

"Okay," Peter huffs, "Get ready to run like hell. Ready?" he asks, pushing up the brick of the building so he's standing. Olivia's face is a little grey, but she pulls herself up too, nodding.

"Run!" Peter shouts, as more shapeshifters come out from behind the building as he's making a mad dash a few feet down the road to scoop up the abandoned bag, his fingers scraping against the pebbled road as he grabs it. One shapeshifter lifts its bloodied head from the body, snapping at Peter who quickly back peddles. He turns without bothering to look behind to toss the bag over his shoulder to run with thundering steps to Olivia who's got a head start on him around the corner.

There are more and more shapeshifters coming into view around them as they pound by, Peter catching up to Olivia at the end of the stretch of the street. Olivia feels like her heart is trapped in her throat as more of them shift in their aimless direction to follow their escape.

"They're everywhere!" Peter's throat is dry as he shouts, swinging the bag at an emaciated shapeshifter with graying skin as it lurches out from behind a dumpster. Its head whips backward and Peter vaguely hears the crack of its spine breaking as it falls sideways and out of their way.

"New York isn't the only place overrun," Peter shouts beside her.

Every limb is on fire, Olivia's mind screaming for some hopeful escape route as they run. Her lungs are tight with fear that tickles her ears as she looks back and counts a least a dozen of them still following.

They turn another corner, Peter's hand digging furiously into the bag to retrieve his crowbar before tossing the rest of the bag aside. Olivia's hand digs into his wrist and he looks up and things go from bad to worse.

There are about a dozen trucks set up down the street, little fires burning between the distance of tents and Olivia doesn't know how she missed it, the voices and images all scrambling together as she tries to sort them out. There are dozens of men in fatigues, laughing together as they spread out between the camp, and Olivia feels Peter's whoosh of air in his lungs. A man with ginger hair and freckles finds them as they freeze and shouts; pointing a finger in their direction and Peter grabs Olivia's pack and shoves as they take off to the left as shapeshifters start to pour in on either side of the camp. The gingered man takes off behind them, gun in hand.

"Go!" Peter shouts over and over again, shotgun blasts exploding overhead as the band of Resisters realize the shapeshifters have stumbled into their camp. Olivia's doesn't need much encouragement as Peter shoves hard on the back, shapeshifters blocking their way as they come out from the corner they're running toward. Peter stamps his heels into the crumbling road, calling Olivia back when he sees the small metal cylinder that the shapeshifters are stomping toward. He pulls his eyes away when a Resister that's been chasing them twists and runs in the other direction.

His brain melts in his head as he realizes what it is and where he's seen it before.

"Olivia!" He shouts in warning, but she's already too far ahead, feeling another blast that explodes the glass from the building over his head, raining down on him as Resisters open fire. Olivia stops, looking back and noticing he's fallen behind. Peter's voice is hoarse as he tries to scream over the commotion of the sound of ammunition firing in every direction, but she can't hear him; doesn't see what he's frantically pointing to.

Another blast from a gun explodes the arm off the shapeshifter close to Olivia and it squeals angrily, stumbling onto the metal box that Olivia just now notices it hidden in the dirt, and there's no time to react when the makeshift land mine erupts into great white fire as it explodes, lifting Olivia off the ground and kicks the air out of her lungs from the force. She lands hard on her back as she falls, everything going fuzzy as raindrops of mottled flesh land around her.

The sounds of sirens wail in the distance, and Olivia wonders for a moment how more shapeshifters got into the lab.

When she opens her eyes through crust and debris, she realizes that the sirens aren't from the lab but inside her head; radiating painfully as she tries to sit up. The chaos of battling shapeshifters and Resisters is erupting all around her, even though the sounds muffled to the point that she feels like her whole head is trapped underwater. She staggers when she tries to sit up, the throbbing pain in her chest spreading like fire and her double vision making it difficult to tell which direction she's facing.

She gets her forearms under her, and the ache in her chest worsens as it screams in protest and she's pretty sure a few ribs are busted. She's finally able to push up enough to see there's a torn-off arm not far from her face, the veins and skin shredded and dripping blood and mercury and she scrambles away from it, realizing as her vision clears that more and more body parts are strewn around her. She cranes her neck to notice there are shapeshifters and Resisters swarming all around her.

There's a new flash of pain that hits her hard in the back and she's back to being face down on the street, cheek stamped into the pebbled asphalt. She feels the heavy heel of a boot as it stomps her back and she would scream in pain if only the air wasn't knocked out of her lungs. She settles on making gurgling noises as she tries to breathe through the dust. When sounds of voices trickle in over the pain, she realizes she can't find Peter among the chaos of sound and emotion that's saturated over the war zone.

"Don't fucking move!" shouts the voice belonging to the foot, the decimals of sound jacking up as her hearing starts to return in short, sudden, violent bursts. There's a cold sensation at the base of her skull and she knows instinctively that it's the barrel of the rifle even if she can't see it. Through blurry eyes and debilitating breaths she looks for Peter, frantically trying to find him against the backdrop of flaying arms and twisting bodies as chaos ensues between shapeshifters and the small camp of Resisters.

The shapeshifters spread like wildfire, attacking in jagged movements and bared teeth and the disturbance becomes more and more frantic as members of the ill-prepared group fire blindly into the hordes of walking dead. Her hands are stuck on either side of her head and wouldn't be useful so long as the gun's shoved painfully into the back of her neck hard enough to drive her chin into the street below her.

"Get off me!" she catches Peter's gruff voice, twisting her head to angle a look off to her left. She finds Peter on the street further down, two men with guns trying very unsuccessfully to force him onto his stomach. There are more shifters than rifles, she notes as she looks around— the small swarm of men taking aim and firing, exploding heads in thunderous waves that makes the barrel against her neck vibrate.

She prays the kid doesn't have an itchy trigger finger, made far more nervous as he struggles to keep a firm hold on her back as a shifter tears into the neck of a grizzly guy with a beard six feet to their right. There's a strangled scream then a gunshot from somewhere and both the man and shapeshifter drop before she can twist to look away. She's breathing in the chalky dust and it stings, the pressure on her back making her go from dizzy to nauseous.

There's a burst of commotion as Peter snakes a kick low to the gut to one of his captors, throwing him backward spread-eagled on the crumbling asphalt. A shifter breaks off from feeding on another fallen body to fold in the man and he disappears behind the dust that's kicked up as he squeals. Peter makes a grab at the gun of the other, narrowly avoiding a shotgun blast that explodes the kneeling shifter, throwing it forward onto the mutilated body it was disemboweling.

Peter's got the crowbar snaked free from wherever it was hiding and swings. There's a crunch and the second man collapses and Peter's got the rifle wrenched free from his arms. He takes aim and with remarkable ease fires on another shapeshifter whose mouth and clothes are covered in fresh blood, blasting its face off as it stalks toward him.

"Peter!" Olivia shouts from under foot and he turns to seek her out, handling the semi-automatic and standing against the haze of smoldering fire and dust to find her. He shoulders the rifle and fires again, the kickback rocking his body as another round discharges through the smoke and into another shapeshifter that Olivia didn't even see until it dropped ungracefully not a foot away from where she lays.

He misunderstands though. It wasn't a cry of help that Olivia shouts: it's a warning. And Peter realizes too late.

Peter didn't realize that the gangly ginger kid that's been stomping the air out of her had lifted his gun away from her neck. And presently that gun is now pointed and taking aim directly where he stands not far from her, the kid's focus terrified as Olivia feels his intentions clear as day. The gunshot explodes out of the chamber so quickly that Olivia barely has time to react, throwing a wild elbow into his leg as he aims. By some miracle, she's met with the affirmation of a sharp yelp and jerking recoil and the shot's off its mark, pelting into the dirt instead Peter of Peter's face.

The exhilarating high of not watching Peter's head vanish from his shoulders is short lived; she doesn't miss the burning fury or the downward swing of the butt of the gun as it clips her painfully in the temple and she sees stars before blood blots out her vision completely. When she's able to wipe enough away, the red face of the kid looks down murderously at her, little pieces of spittle raining down as he snarls.

"'Livia!" shouts Peter, his voice cutting through the exchange of gunfire but her eyes are glued to the barrel that's now point-blank at her forehead. The kid twists his eyes menacingly in Peter's direction, pushing the rifle into her cheek instead, forcing her head in the direction of Peter as he races toward them. He doesn't make it more than ten steps before his body's jerked forward, hand flying to his shoulder and Olivia's stomach jumps into her throat as she feels his pain swell as the gun ricochets out of his arms as he falls a few feet from her, kicking up more dust as it settles. The black of his wool coat camouflages the color but not the wetness that's now seeping openly down his back.

"Peter!" she shouts, waiting, trying to feel him out despite the push of the combat boot that's stomping hard on her chest.

"On your knees," orders the giant bear of a man behind the smoking barrel, jabbing the rifle into Peter's back when he doesn't move.

"Do it." He spits as he jabs again, this time closer to the wetness and Olivia let go of the breath she's holding when she hears Peter hiss in response.

Peter finally pushes himself upright, covered in dirt and dust, his face caked in blood. His eyes flicker from the gun pushing into Olivia's cheek to the face of the man holding it. She recognizes his face; realizing he's calculating as he rolls the odds over in his head, _ever the genius,_ but when his eyes find hers she sees the resignation. Feels the defeat. His hands fold quietly over the back of his head, straightening his spine as the hammer's cocked behind him. In the small shake of his head he's telling her to look away. She doesn't.

When the gun's nestled to meet the back of his skull, Olivia catches his eyes and every memory she's ever had of him pounds through her veins like a an angry pack of wild horses. Pulsing images of his somber face when they first learned of the shattered gateway; his heavy eyes and gentle hands in the bunker; fierce kisses and flexing forearms when he held her firm against the dead bark of a tree as he pushed into her; his fury and anguish over Walter; his breath on her neck and heavy weight of him; the way his fingers tangled in her hair. All ending with the look he gives her now, a slight quirked lip of his silent smile he has just for her, even as he's about to die.

She doesn't want him to be taken from her.

She finally closes her eyes.

"You're gonna watch. Eyes open." Snarls the voice as the rifle clicks above her, pushing hard into her cheek, forcing open her jaw. She doesn't. She hears the barrel above her churn, thinking intently on Peter's face, his eyes, letting it fill her to the brim, bubbling over the sides and saturating her like she remembers from hours ago of everything Peter. It warms her quite inexplicably, first as flat terror tracing the curl of her toes and the soft skin of her ears but then it morphs, twisting and turning into a familiar charging; like she's a live wire about to spark.

She can't do anything to stop it, and she has a feeling that she's not the one controlling it.

There's a hum in her chest, the smell of something she can't quite place and everything explodes in white hot pain.

Then she feels nothing at all.


	24. Aftermath

She feels like shit.

It's the smell of charred plastic wafting into her consciousness that first rouses her, like it's singed into her nostrils, but it's the overwhelming feeling that she's been crushed by a tank that finally takes her from unconsciousness to awake, and _holy god _does she wish she wasn't.

When she's finally able to open her eyes the light is obtrusive; the overwhelming wave of nausea so sudden that she barely has time to turn her head before her stomach lurches and her sick is splattered into the gravel. The same strange, burnt smell is heady as she coughs through the bile as the sickness recedes, shifting her body weight to smother the feeling of every neuron fizzling from being set on fire. There's no sound; at least none that she can properly discern and that's almost as alarming as the quickening realization that Something Very Bad has just happened.

There are several more false starts and scrabbling against asphalt before she can finally blink enough debris out of her eyes to focus on her surroundings, as hazy as they are. She's met with a thick wall of utter confusion that leads way into quickening horror as her vision clears and she's able to look around. She realizes the origin of the peculiar smell that's been unnamed until now, the charred remains of the man she remembers not moments ago holding the business end of his rifle into her face, the sting still sharp against her cheek. With a little gasp, she kicks the faceless figure away, the blooming pain in her chest wrenching bone when she moves too quickly. Blackish smoke ripples from his back like she was poking at a dying fire and she's afraid she might be sick all over again.

Her breaths are coming rapidly now, wet and soggy and making her dizzy as she back peddles far enough away from the body before she's confident it won't reanimate and chase after her. It doesn't. It just stays where she kicked it, lifeless and melted and perfectly still, aside from the now dwindling smoke still emanating from his back.

The area surrounding her is completely scorched into blackness; little fires licking off the bodies of Resisters and Shapeshifters alike, all broken and crumbling like a bomb dropped on the two mile wide city block. A quick and frightened assessment of hands over her essential body parts proves that the rest of her is somehow unscathed, the edges of her jacket slightly smoldering at the end of the cuffs.

How she survived this is beyond her; _how anyone survived this, _she thinks wildly, but a new thought pushes through the cloudy mess of her consciousness, demanding her attention:

Peter.

_Peter._

The fear of Peter being so close to the eruption spreads through her like wildfire as she ignore the logic and simply reacts. She gets her forearms under her and pushes herself up on shay legs, the nausea battling the horrible pain of her busted ribs, but she shoves them both down to scan where she remembers Peter kneeling before, stepping over the alarming amount of lifeless bodies and praying he's not among them.

She calls his name, first as a shushed whisper, afraid whatever hit them before might come back again, but the more bodies she turns over, the more terrified she becomes, finding melted faces and charred hair and trying to ready herself to find his dead body among them. The force of the reality of finding him hits her violently and she sinks to the ground, the choking sob catching in her throat before she grinds her teeth together and pushes herself back up.

She finds the remains of another scorched body crumpled over and gives up trying to be covert and starts shouting for him in the devastated street, her own voice ricocheting and taunting back at her from the buildings. She's soon hoarse from calling for him, every inch of her throbbing as she continues to stumble.

The black of his jacket is buried under a thick film of rubble and partially obscured by the remains of the beastly man who was holding the gun to him. She almost laughs when she sees him, the blood pounding in her skull as she trips over a mutilated severed leg and falls, elbows hitting hard on the pavement as she stumbles. She claws her way back upright, her desperation almost verging on violent.

"Peter," she says his name when she finally makes it to where he lies, dropping to her knees and pushing the smoldering corpse off, not even feeling the heat from the crumbling skin and fabric on the palms of her hands. Peter's face-down, his dark hair peppered grey with debris. Olivia's eyes are fuzzy as she attempts to sense him out; feeling flat nothing in return and afraid to touch him.

_Don't be such a coward _she scolds herself, she has to know.

She wraps her fingers around his arm and heaves, holding her breath and preparing for his scarred and wrecked face, already halfway into the darkening grief surrounding her. His face is smudged black and streaked in blood; eyes closed, but he's not like the others. Hope flutters.

"Peter," she tries again, shaking him gently at first and then harder when he doesn't respond. She forgets everything except Peter's face: the burning rubble of the ruined area, the dozens of dead bodies littered around them, the fact that the pain in her chest is close to crippling. She doesn't care. She doesn't fucking care. She's pleading with whatever deity that might listen, surrendering their only cure, Massive Dynamic, Walter, _anyone _if he'd just opened his goddamned eyes.

"Jesus Christ," comes Peter's gruff voice; an angry hiss from between his lips as he attempts to breathe in the crumbled asphalt. His eyes flutter open and Olivia's laugh is a cross between hysteria and relief and so sudden that it rocks her entire body.

Peter's eyes are glazed when he finds her face, taking in her features for a moment too long before he attempts to push himself into a sitting position, Olivia having to grab his shoulder to help him, her face stretched into a smile. His eyes are tight and he hisses, his hand instantly moving to his injured shoulder.

"You okay?" she asks, shifting onto her haunches, ready for him to spontaneously combust like the others.

Peter takes a few steadying breaths before he's able to open his eyes so wide that the whites around the irises are visible as he slowly takes in the wreckage that she's found him in the middle of.

"Olivia," he says, reaching out blindly to touch her face with his hand, as he sees all the death, _all the destruction,_ and the spark of his skin rewires her to the eclectic taste of his emotions. He's raging between terror and utter disbelief; she's delirious from the sheer ridiculousness of being so engrained to feeling him, even if it's bubbling with raw pain. He finds her eyes again, still wide and full of questions that she doesn't even know how to begin to answer.

Instead, she lets him check her, push his trembling fingers through her matted hair as he attempts to wrap his head around the sudden destruction and the fact that they're the only survivors.

"How?" he manages against her face when he presses his nose against the bridge of hers. She's covered in the same coppery smell that's covering them like a low cloud, and he's desperate to smell _her _under everything else.

She doesn't know if he's asking how she found him, or how they survived. She doesn't answer. Just lets him touch her silently and tries to push aside the ticking time clock before they're discovered again.

"What happened?" his voice is graver; almost thick as he pushes her hair out of a gash in her forehead she hadn't noticed before.

Olivia wants to tell him she doesn't care, opening her mouth and then closing it without a word. She can't begin to try to put together the pieces of this fucked-up puzzle.

"I don't know," she says earnestly. Peter's face slides into an ashy grey as he shifts, twisting around to survey the annihilation, his disgust evident as he sees the remains of the man who tried to blow his brains out.

"Are they all dead?" he asks. She nods and he pulls her closer to him.

"This was you?" he didn't mean to say it out loud, but he's not exactly thinking coherently. He sounds more in awe than terrified as he looks over her shoulder. Olivia's face grafts together into something terrified when she considers his observation, but shakes it off.

"We need to take cover." She says suddenly, realizing that someone might notice and come back to finish the job. She's already pulling up, shifting into Peter's weight in her haste. Peter's face twists in pain and he has to squeeze his eyes shut as he tries to steady himself with a ragged breath.

"Wait," he says. "Wait."

He settles his hands along her jaw, focusing on the warmth of her skin to keep from screaming like a baby at his mottled shoulder. He feels more wetness there and opens his eyes.

He draws his hands back, noticing more blood smudged pink against her cheeks. "You're bleeding," he mumbles when he's able to speak, his concern prickling her skin. She swipes at her cheek and it feels sticky warm to the touch.

"It's not me," she says, the nausea washing back over her as she leans back into his space to pull his arm toward her. Peter's shoulder explodes in fire as she pushes up the cuff on his coat away from his wrist. It's drenched in blood, saturating through the fibers of his coat and clinging stubbornly to the pores in his skin.

"This could be problematic," Peter gasps as he tries to joke, talking becoming taxing. Olivia feels the pain radiate everywhere and the short-lived adrenaline of the miracle of them surviving is now reduced to the unadulterated reality that Peter's gunshot wound is the world's biggest shifter homing device.

"Yeah," she allows as she pushes aside the lapel of his coat, more wetness meeting her underneath and Peter sounds like a boiling teapot at her gentle touch. She wants to say something, but the iron smell of Peter's blood chokes her, her stomach twisting and she bites her tongue hard and refuses to let herself be sick again.

Peter gasps again, feeling Olivia's fingers glide across his collarbone and swallows the cry when she presses against the skin too hard.

"I don't think it went through," she comments. She twists around where they're squatting, running through the facts in her head:

Peter's bleeding. They're in the middle of a wasteland of explosion. They need to get the bullet out. Hopefully there's no major internal damage. They need to get out of sight. They need medical supplies. Peter's losing too much blood… it's all rattling quickly in her mind, trying to take precedence in what needs to be accounted for first.

"C'mon," she decides that getting out of sight is the most pressing of matters. With as much authority that she can fake over the bubbling panic, she puts her plan into motion.

"Can you walk?" she asks and Peter nods even though she can feel the buckshot of pain from his wound radiating in his chest like it's her own. There's a crunching noise inside her ribs as she wraps an arm around his to pull him to stand, grinding her jaw down to keep quiet as her bones vibrate angrily under his weight. Peter lets out one ragged growl as he leans against her, and Olivia feels the warmth of his blood against her chest, and she wants nothing more than to burn her clothes.

"Wait," Peter gasps when she threads his good arm over her shoulder. "I need to find my pack."

Olivia starts to argue but Peter pulls away, hand wrapped tight around his shoulder as he grabs the sizzling fabric a few feet away from them, kicking a dead resister out of the way harder than necessary to retrieve it. He stoops to dump the contents onto the ground, grappling through socks and canteens and the little food they carried with them with blood-crusted hands.

"Walter's blood." He mutters with a lopsided pull of his mouth when he feels Olivia's hurried stare digging into his back. He can't stop the shaking in his hands when he finds it, perfect and unbroken in the vial, the brilliant red vibrant against blackness in its nested location in inside the pack. He returns it to the pouch with everything else, finally letting Olivia drag him to a nearby building that looks least likely to crumble.

"How're ya doing?" Olivia's voice is strained as she says it, Peter's panting loud and wet when she's able to haul his weight to slump against the scorched brick wall as she jimmies the lock to the front door. It's mostly destroyed from the attack anyway so Olivia just has to place a solid kick to knock it off the handle to make it inside of the old office building. Peter does his best to limp along with her, looking progressively worse the more they move.

"Never better," Peter grates in a self-deprecating sort of way. The air is dusty inside the expanse of the foyer, stale smelling. "You?"

Olivia's brain sizzles inside her skull and it feels like her chest is being squeezed in a vice.

"Dancing," she mutters.

"What?" Peter's sure he's misheard her.

"I feel like dancing." She elaborates through clenched teeth. She greeted with an exasperated chortle, or at least what she assumes would be an exasperated chortle if Peter weren't panting like a tired basset hound.

"Sweetheart, if we get out of here alive I'll take you to a motherfucking hoedown."

She wishes she could find it funny.

"Why do you think they were staying in tents instead of the buildings?" Peter asks half-lucidly then as they stumble through the darkened room. Peter's weight is getting heavier the further they travel; her busted ribs about to crack as she looks around.

"Something tells me they weren't." she says when they finally stop. Surprisingly, most of the inside of the building escaped the initial blast. There are bits of supplies piled along the walls; boxed up and organized. There are a few makeshift cots that remind Olivia of the military bunks she hated.

Peter's exhaustion is overwhelming and they plop down together on the nearest cot Olivia can drag Peter to, which is just in time as his legs give out and they bounce a little as they fall, Peter's gasp ragged against Olivia's ear.

"Hopefully no one's going to come looking for the camp." Olivia says as she disentangles herself from Peter's bony limbs. Peter helps her sit him up, his face pale against the darkness of the room.

He just shakes his head, brow furrowed.

"Don't think they'll get further than Chernobyl out there if they do." He mutters. Olivia considers his confidence as she flattens her hand against the wound on his back.

"How'd you do it?" he asks, eyes glazed but as piercing azure as ever. She feels the wetness against her fingers as they're flattened against his back, but it's the unwavering gaze that bothers her.

"What?" Olivia is starting to let the exhaustion wear on her, grating on her already frazzled nerves.

"Out there," Peter elaborates, hissing when Olivia pushes too hard. "I mean, I'm not complaining but—" he babbles, chest heaving.

"That wasn't me." Olivia's voice is loud; firm. Peter stops his insistent mumbling, crumbling his brow like he's trying to see if she's fucking with him.

"Wasn't you? Seriously?" he scoffs, leaning toward her like she's just told him she had a third arm tucked away somewhere. She shakes his gaze away, wiping his blood on her jeans and raising up, wanting to get as far away as possible from his questioning look.

She secures the room with Peter's glare at her back, which turns out to be stacked with supplies. She latches the doors together and seals them inside. She opens the first cardboard box to find rows of canned food and her heart sputters in relief. The next one is kitchen supplies and she grabs a relatively sharp looking blade from the pile of forks and spoons and the cleanest rag. She's back to Peter's side before she has a chance to explore the depths of the rest of supplies.

"I need to get your jacket off." Olivia tells him, already unbuttoning to slide him out of it. Peter grits his teeth through it but remains silent as Olivia helps him thread his arms through the sleeves and plops the jacket into a mangled, bloodied heap beside them.

"If you want to get me naked, just say so." He attempts, but the tension in his voice deflates his joke considerably. He sits on the side of the cot, elbows propped on his knees so she can have access to his back. She leans him forward to survey the blackest part of his wound, his shirt sticking like a fine seal to his skin and it makes her stomach harden. Olivia's face doesn't even register his joke. She wields the short knife to cut through the fabric, dissecting the flannel and undershirt along the curve of his spine. Peter shivers, but stays stone still.

"It's probably a smaller caliber weapon. A rifle would have killed you." She says as she works, trying to convince herself that this was better.

"Lucky me." Peter says breathlessly when the blade of the knife skims his neck. Olivia's too silent as she works and it's starting to freak him out.

"How bad is it?" he finally says over his shoulder when Olivia's silence becomes too much to bear. He misses the grimace when she pulls the torn material away, the shredded skin from the bullet wound puckering a bright pink around the edges on Peter's shoulder. She was right though, the front of his chest is still unmarred and free from the carnage. It could have been much worse.

"The bullet's still in there." She answers evenly, using her best poker face.

Peter's poker face is better.

He twists his head to study her hard for a moment, like he always does when she knows he knows she's keeping something from him. She's not bothered by it though,

"My bag," he motions for her to grab it.

"You got something helpful in there?" Olivia quips, her fingers already sticky from the blood that's coating the skin evenly on Peter's back. She presses the dishtowel to the wound and Peter hisses at the contact, his opposite hand snaking across to press hard against hers .

"Depends on what your definition of _helpful_ is," he returns in a hoarse voice, nodding to her that _I got this _and she sneaks her hand out to retrieve his pack, opening it and rifling through the contents.

"What am I looking for?" she asks testily, her hands leaving bloodied prints on everything inside his bag.

"Inside zipper," he mumbles from the bed, the sheen of sweat beading on his forehead as he tries to talk. When Olivia opens it he continues, "the vial."

Olivia brow furrows as she stops looking.

"You want Walter's blood?" she asks. Peter shakes his head, eyes clenched shut.

"No, the clear one."

Olivia pulls another vial out into the dim light that the room provides, her eyes widening as she scans through the watery contents.

"Is this what I think it is?" she asks and Peter's eyes crinkle when his smile is too tight on his waxy face. "Where did you get this?"

Peter grins. Where else?

"You're going to need to get that bullet out," he says, opening his eyes to find her whitened face as she takes in his words. "I can't reach myself, and you need me to walk you through it. Unless you've had experience." He says. Olivia mulls it over.

"Why do I feel like this is a terrible, terrible idea?" Olivia says as she bridges the gap between them, prepping the contents and wondering when it was he snuck it, or stole it from the lab.

Peter's chuckle turns into a wet cough, the hand over the towel already turning scarlet underhand to stain his fingers.

"When exactly have you gained experience in digging a bullet out of someone?" she asks offhandedly, pressing her hand back over the towel so Peter can move his away.

"Just like riding a bike." He says but she's not sure what it means.

"You going to be able to handle this?" she asks him, even though she's feeling light headed and right back to sick. Peter's eyes are half-lidded as he smiles.

"You've never seen me on morphine before. The question is, are you going to be able to handle this?"

* * *

><p>AN: after having been talked back from the ledge, I've decided to take a stronger focus on finishing drafting this story before rushing to post on a weekly basis. I'm afraid if I don't, this thing is going to be 200 chapters of Peter/Olivia whump with no plot and no ending. Thank you to everyone who's been so kind to review, and I promise this story is going to continue... just not as quickly. Thanks again to Vampire Digger for the walk-through and help. As always.

-S


	25. Je Ne Regrette Rien

A/N: This took a lot of hand-holding and kicking and screaming to finish, not to mention extensive editing. Thank you to everyone who has shown support on this story. It's very much appreciated :) The ending of the story is pretty well fleshed out and in sight! THANK YOU to Bruschetta Bread for the ongoing help and support!

All feedback welcomed.

* * *

><p>"<em>Goddamn,<em> that hurts."

"Quit fidgeting then, I can't see."

"Why did I think that you'd be better at this?"

Olivia smirks at that, even if her hands are shaking and covered in so much of Peter's blood that she looks like she's wearing gloves as she digs around in the pinkish muscle inside his back.

"I never claimed to be an expert at fishing for bullets with hunting knives," she says. "I must have missed that class at the academy." She's got a Bowie knife in one hand and is trying very carefully to find the small caliber bullet lodged in between the muscle of Peter's shoulder blades. Peter, for his part, is shouting smart-assed instructions over his shoulder as he tries not to drool on himself from the morphine Olivia juiced him up on before they started.

"That muscle there, you feel that?" Peter asks then curses when Olivia nudges the knife, spitting the second half through grit teeth "That's the trapezoid muscle. I _like _that muscle. Don't shred that muscle."

"No pressure though." He tacks on.

"No pressure. Right." Olivia steadies.

Thankfully, Olivia had been able to find some rubbing alcohol and sizable a first aid kit among the looted supplies lining the entrance of the lobby. Peter had taken the morphine injection well. The rubbing alcohol on the other hand had pulled a snarl from his throat so low that it reminded Olivia of a wild animal.

Pushing the tip of the blade into the open wound in an attempt to shovel out a bullet should have freaked her out a little, but she's saddled in disbelief that he made it through the destruction at all and she doesn't want to question the why. So she pushes and lets Peter cuss like a sailor in a few languages that Olivia recognizes and even more that she doesn't. There's a small sewing kit on the box, like the one you'd find at a fancy hotel, that she's very purposely ignoring because she knows she's not ready for _that._

"Do you see it?" Peter voice is soggy wet sand in his throat, muffled into his chest as Olivia gently moves the blade of the knife further into his skin. She's propped behind him on the cot, Peter between her knees as she steadies the blade and tries not to destroy the muscle Peter's suddenly so attached to.

"No," she says and she feels Peter's back trembling under her hand from the exertion of remaining still. "But I think I'm closer," she tries to soothe, but Peter grumbles darkly under his breath.

"How's the pain?" she asks because she's not sure what else to say and they both need the distraction. "Is the morphine helping?"

Peter's ghost-white and almost translucent; wet wax paper under her fingers.

"It's helping me not care that you're being about as delicate as an elephant in a china shop," he bitches. Olivia regrets saying anything so she refocuses her concentration.

"'_Delicate'_ is not exactly the word people describe me as." She retorts. Peter's mood lightens just a little.

"No, I suppose not."

"You ever taken morphine before?" she babbles. Peter feels _fuzzy _to her, harder to pick up on and she assumes that the morphine is finally working.

"It's not my inhibitor of choice." Peter stumbles over the stocky consonants in the words. "But when you're making shady deals with shady men in shady places, it comes in handy from time to time."

"Oh," Olivia manages, remembering the first time she met Peter: the cocky smugness that radiated from every fiber of his linen blazer and expensive sunglasses. With everything that had happened in the last year, she'd almost forgotten he was dangerous.

"I can't imagine you having a hard time making friends." Olivia's babbling continues and Peter huffs, the endorphins spiking from the morphine. "I didn't think anyone would actually go through the trouble of shooting you though."

"Not my first rodeo," Peter drawls slowly, enunciating carefully. "And I've never actually been shot myself. Beaten up, yes. Stabbed once, too. But first time being shot though. I gotta tell you, it sucks."

Olivia balks.

"I thought you knew what you were doing." Olivia's voice raises three octaves in pitch, her hands white-knuckling the hilt of the blade.

"_I do know _what I'm doing. Remember I lived outside the military Green Zone in Iraq before you found me. I've had loads of experience." Peter replies easily.

There's a heady sigh as Olivia tries to settle her shaky nerves. She works in silence.

"_Non, rien de rien_," Peter mumbles in a sing-song voice after a while, cut off at the end by a ragged breath as Olivia presses further into his skin, his voice is shattered glass.

"What's that?" she asks instead.

"_Non, je ne regrette rien_," Peter continues, eyes squeezed shut to focus on the words, tilting his head back drunkenly and Olivia has to pull the blade back from piercing through the muscle he was bitching about a minute ago. There's a strange inflection in his voice that she can't quite place, a new talent she hasn't witnessed before.

"That's what? French?" she asks, steadying his head forward on his neck, waiting a good ten seconds before pushing the tip of the blade back in past his shoulder. He grunts: holding his breath and then releasing it.

"Agent Dunham, you speak the language of love?" he trills, voice rough and glassy-eyed. Olivia has to stop herself from rolling her eyes, steadying her shaking wrist from worrying too much about the blood he's losing. And he's losing a lot. The sun's low against the boarded window sills, peeking through the slats to sneak in, and every minute that passes is a minute of light for Olivia to find the bullet.

"Haven't had the pleasure," Olivia grates, feeling the drop in her stomach when the knife pushes against something solid a good three inches deep. Peter's fingers dig into her knees, hard enough to bruise and she winces along with him when the he internalizes the scream he doesn't release. There are a few moments of thankful silence as she investigates her findings, and she's starting to think Peter's blacked out sitting straight up.

"Edith Piaf," he mumbles, startling her. "Walter always played her record in the lab. Remember?" he's slurring openly now, his voice betraying the sentiment he's trying so hard to not feel. Olivia tilts the blade into the resistance, straining her eyes and focusing the flashlight to see the glint of copper at the end.

"Found it," she says. She looks up to find Peter's head bobbled forward into his chest and she has to give him a good squeeze with her knees to nudge him back.

"Now what?" she asks, her pulse quickening at the sight of the butt of the small caliber bullet lodged in his back. The blood oozing from the wound has reached the edge of his jeans despite trying her best to keep it contained with the towel, but she doesn't have enough hands; the coppery iron smell is stronger than the dust and charred flesh that's been lingering in their clothing since they made it inside.

"Now what, _what_?" he mimics like an ill-trained parrot.

"Now the tweezers?" she asks him severely, growing tired of this morphine-induced version of Peter.

"Did you ever play that game Operation as a kid? Remove funny bone. Don't touch the sides or _bzzzzzz." _He makes a noise like electricity and then snickers.

"Ni le bien qu'on m'a fait," he continues in perfect French. Olivia wonders how many languages he can actually speak. There are so many things she doesn't know about him. He's becoming less and less helpful the longer this goes on, so she tries a new tactic to focus him. Drawing inspiration on the times she witnessed Peter do it with Walter.

"What does it mean? The French song?" she asks as she pushes the knife to separate enough muscle to insert a slender set of tweezers from the first aid kit. The disinfectant smell of the rubbing alcohol is in stark contrast to the earthy smell of Peter's skin, too bleached and abraded to be familiar. She catches herself on him faintly, and that brings up burgeoning feelings she doesn't really have time to deal with.

"It means," Peter says absent-mindedly rubbing his palms across the fabric of her legs, the friction shocking her skin through the denim. "It means _I have no regrets." _ He says, and he sounds wistful.

"I miss Walter's records." He says. It's the first time he's mentioned Walter aside from the cure or without them screaming at one another. The mention of his name makes the insides of her stomach ache. She pushes the tweezers further in the path the blade made, trying to avoid the sides of the ragged skin. There's a choking sound as Peter grates through the pain.

"I miss them too," she soothes, trying to push the feeling of comfort she's faking into him somehow. "Never thought I'd say _that_." She almost laughs at the idea of missing Walter's scratchy records, the homey smell of the lab, the warmth it offered that's now gone. It was their home.

Peter's head bobbles up, looking into the darkness creeping into the room, coming close enough to touch the toes of his shoes against the dusty floorboards. He scoots his battered shoes away.

"Almost there." She shushes.

"How are those busted ribs of yours?" he asks, and Olivia is reminded of the steady thud of pain against her chest.

"What?"

"I notice things too, you know. You took a pretty bad tumble from that land mine." He slurs. "You going to be able to make it the rest of the way?"

"I wasn't the one who was shot, so I think I can manage myself, thanks." Olivia snarls, the vibration in her ribs becoming more staggering the more he talks about it.

"You sure that's a good idea?"

"I know that we need to keep moving if we're going to make it to New York in the next two days." She says and Peter nods his agreement.

Olivia stops moving behind him, and from the feeling she's got the length of her entire arm buried deep in his back. And it's covered in acid. Olivia gives one last pull and after a disgusting sucking noise, the glint of the bullet is freed.

"You know," she says excitedly, "if you were so worried about my ribs then you should have thought of that before getting shot." She marvels at the copper crushed slug under the beam of the flashlight.

"You think I had a choice in that matter?" He snorts.

"I think," she says as she gingerly touches the skin outside the wound, inspecting. "You try to be the hero." She runs her thumb too close to the curled edge of skin and Peter lets out a bark like he's laughing.

She grimaces and snakes her hands away, almost dropping the bloody shell, and that would be a shame after all the work she went through. She drops it soundlessly into the box, watching it roll to a stop in the center, leaving a smear of blood in its wake like a snail.

"Hero," he scoffs, but never finishes his thought.

"How'd we end up here?" Peter asks suddenly, apparently oblivious to the fact that Olivia's finished.

"Well, you got shot and then I dug a bullet out of your sorry ass." She answers, pointing to the box. He doesn't notice. "And don't thank me yet, I haven't opened the sewing kit yet."

"No, not here. _Out there." _Peter says, pointing his finger in the direction of the window leading to the outside. Little streams of muted lavender light filters through the nailed two-by-fours separating them from the outside. Olivia pours the rest of the alcohol liberally around the wound, the growling tearing deep from the caverns of Peter's chest as it bubbles through the ends of torn flesh. He knows she's done it on purpose, but he's a runaway train of incoherent thought. She pushes the towel square over the wound, pressing hard to stifle the bleeding. It hasn't let up and she's starting to get worried when she looks beside them at all the bloodied scraps of Peter's clothes.

"I remember you," Peter's voice is lighter, like he's moved onto delirium.

"Oh, yeah?" she answers, digging the palm of her hand into his back. She has enough experience to know that they have to slow the bleeding enough for her to stitch up his back.

"I remember the rifle…" Peter floats delicately around the image and Olivia feels his mood shift. He's starting to shiver from the chill.

"You're going into shock; I need to stop the bleeding." She says to shut him up, trying to ground him to the fact that he's slowly bleeding out. She leans forward, reaching for another rag to push into his skin but Peter's fingers are digging hard into her thighs to stop her from doing anything but listen.

"You were going to die. _I was going to die._ I felt the gun, right here." He lets go of one of her legs to tap two fingers against his temple. He twists awkwardly to face her, and Olivia has to slide her arm over his shoulder to keep the towel in place, since Peter's either forgotten or doesn't care about the fact that he's got a giant gaping hole in his back. His eyes are heavy but he looks oddly focused, and Olivia sees Walter's unburdened face staring back at her.

"You had a gun, too. Right there." He taps two more fingers against her cheek, still sore and now she recognizes the throbbing from the pressure of the gun from earlier. She refuses to react, to show that it still hurts. He looks at her like he hasn't recognized her until now, and it's starting to unnerve her.

"I remember," she says brusquely. "I also remember you getting shot in the back."

"But you survived," he says tonelessly, cutting her off. "You lived. We lived."

Her arm around his neck is starting to cramp.

"Yes." She mumbles.

"I was going to die. I felt it. I was…ready." He works through his thoughts like a particularly difficult formula; an equation that's evaded him before.

"I saw you. Saw the rifle. I heard…the hammer to the gun. I was going to have my head blown off…and I was ready. And that wasn't something I ever thought I'd be." He shrugs. Olivia doesn't like to hear him talk so trivially about himself. "The only chance I had to save you was to let them shoot me. To be okay with that. I wasn't trying to be heroic, I just didn't want you to die."

"Peter," she warns.

"And then I woke up and I thought I was dead. And you were there. I thought that you were dead too. And I remember that I was so pissed off, because after the one good thing I've ever done you still ended up dying too."

The direction he's taking this conversation is bothering her.

"Peter. You have to listen to me," she says very seriously, trying to force his blasted irises to focus. "We will talk about what happened, but not now. Now I need you to sit still and let me help you."

Peter nods, swaying a bit but twisting forward to give her access to his back.

"We're not dead," Olivia says soothingly. "But you're losing blood."

Peter's features are gaunt in the pale light, his elbows too bony when he reaches up to cover the towels with his hand. His breathing is coming out in short, shallow wisps as Olivia pulls away to wipe her hands off on a clean part of his shirt, pouring more alcohol over her hands, stinging the cuts that refuse to heal. She reaches for the sewing kit, carefully removing the largest needle and fingering through the array of colors of thread.

"You gotta color preference?" she asks, wrapping her head around what needs to come next.

Peter doesn't respond, his hand slackening on his back.

"Hey," she says as she shakes a shoulder. Nothing. She touches his forehead. He's warm. _Really warm._ She's got the needle threaded, the black string curling long like a mouse tail down her leg. It's hard to tell which is more nerve-wracking: Peter talking or Peter not talking.

She almost freaks out, resolving to count to ten with her fingers pressed against the steady thud of his heartbeat in his neck before she breathes again. He doesn't seem to be in immediate danger, she decides, hoping the pain and the morphine finally put him out.

"Okay, here we go," she says out loud for no one's benefit but her own as she pushes the sharp edge of the needle into his skin and hopes he'll be out for a while.


	26. Peter Wakes

Peter's restless dreams are vivid bursts of color: bright and very, very disturbing. He's in a cornfield that's been decimated by the Blight; stalks twisted and broken, trampled into the dry earth as they weave over each other like the elaborate rings of a wicker basket.

Everything's too bright and he can't see more than a few feet ahead of him in any direction he turns. He's well enough aware to realize he's dreaming, that he can wake up at any moment and that should be enough to jostle him awake, but it doesn't.

He's alone.

And then he's not.

He sees the fatigues and baseball cap of the dead woman Resister, her shotgun dragging coarse lines in the dirt as she hobbles through the field Peter finds himself in. He opens his mouth and shouts for her to tell him where Olivia is, but no sound escapes past his lips. Peter tries to run to keep up with her as she walks, knowing she'll lead him to Olivia, but she's too far out of his reach to make out much more than her hunched back and one leg dragging broken behind her.

He follows her back to the city block before the explosion and with a shocking jolt he finds Olivia. The staggering woman disappears beyond his sight; muffled by the shapeshifters and Resisters as they swarm in slow motion and erupting gunfire around Olivia's figure.

He sees the man with the rifle standing behind her, raising his gun toward her back and he wants to run to her, throw his arms around her to save her, but he realizes the terror of her face in the instant he gets a good look at her.

She's wearing the same dark suit she used to favor before the world went to shit, her black wool coat blazing out on either side of her like wings as she extends her arms high over her head in a movement so casual that he freezes to watch. He and the Resister with the gun appear to be the only ones who've taken notice of her, the rest still fighting around her and he's fascinated by what she's going to do next. He opens his mouth to warn her, but he's blinded by a sonic boom of sound and light and she explodes into flames, billowing up over her as he tries to shout out but his voice is still missing from his throat.

_Olivia! _He thinks hard, even though there's no way she'd be able to see him, much less hear him through the roar of the fire that's slowly growing larger the longer she stands there, dancing off her fingers and trailing down her clothes to expand beyond the area she's standing in. But she does hear him.

She cocks her head casually and looks at him even as she's entirely consumed by fire, her eyes completely black against the flames.

Peter wakes, jerking against the darkness, sputtering like he's being choked. The images burn his retinas even though the room is black around him.

"Hey, it's okay," he hears Olivia's voice from beside him, rubbing a cool hand over his suddenly heated face. He still feels the effects of the morphine, churning the room together too quickly for him to grab onto anything and he feels like he's falling.

"Olivia," he whimpers; the sound of his voice pathetic, but her name the only word he can seem to form.

He's full of burning coals, the steady thud of pain radiating from his neck down his arms and electrocuting his spine. He blinks through the pain, trying to clear his vision enough to see her.

"It's okay," Olivia voice is tense but her hands gentle as she coaxes him to lie back. "Drink this." She lifts a canteen up to his lips and Peter can barely open his mouth to comply and most of the water dribbles down his chin onto his chest as he tries to choke down the rest.

"How long—" he pants as he coughs through the flat taste of the water, "—how long was I out?"

The twisting angles of the room come into sharper focus as his eyes adjust to the darkness. Olivia's face is barely visible in the darkness as she crouches in front of him, her eyes glassy green marbles, not the stony black he remembers from the dream and he breathes a little easier.

"Hours," she says, not elaborating as she wraps her fingers into the flesh of his arms that feel like they're on fire.

"You slept?" he asks, trying to make his arms function, bringing them numbly to either side of her face, feeling comfort in the iciness of her cheeks.

She shakes his question off, which means _no_. Her eyes dart to his forehead, eyebrows low. He browses the length of the room they're holed up in, and the urge to check for some unseen trouble from outside becomes unbearable.

"It's time to change your bandages." Olivia deflects, guiding him forward to slide in behind him. She pulls on the bandage and it feels like she's taking his skin with her.

"Goddamn your man hands." He gurgles and she snorts behind him and the rooms spins.

He stares at the boarded-up windows to focus his attention. What should be blackness for the time of night is stark white instead, streaming through the cracks of the wood in hazy ripples. He squeezes his eyes and breathes.

"Is it still nighttime?" he grates, feeling his stomach tip and having to swallow to keep it from climbing up his throat.

"Yes…" he hears Olivia's confused response. He continues to breathe, feeling his mind drift aimlessly under the influence of the drug, and he wonders how Walter was able to function so well on whatever he was constantly on. He feels the stab in his stomach and the nausea worsens.

"How do we know if we made the right choice?" he asks her, glad he can't see her face in the darkness.

"Which choice was that?" Olivia says as he feels the cloth pull away from his skin. "How many choices can we have in an apocalypse other than _die _and _try not to die?_" she holds her breath as Peter lets his out.

"Everything's a choice. Every decision. Every indecision." He says the last word through a tight voice.

Silence.

"What about Walter? Leaving him?" He's only able to speak in clipped sentences now, the pain moving from bad to the fucking Titanic of white-hot waves as she cleans the wound. He's gripping Olivia's knees so hard he knows he must be hurting her, but he's going to black out otherwise.

Olivia's breathing continues, high and then low, bouncing like feathers off his naked shoulders. He's starting to feel the spinning unbalance him, the axis of the earth shifting and he's sweating even though he's cold.

"What other choice did we have?" Olivia answers finally, the firm set of her voice telling him that they were almost finished more than the shifting pain did.

He thinks about the alternatives. About Olivia's pipe and his crowbar and the rifle they left with Astrid just in case.

"If I made the _wrong _choice," he manages, "then I'll never see Walter again. Not alive anyway. Maybe it would have been better then to just end it." He feels like his skin's been zipped open, ribs and heart exposed to the elements as she applies a flat hand like a branding iron to his back.

"Peter."

"I was willing to sacrifice the entire world for one man." He finishes; his voice flat. There's a long silence as they both just breathe in Peter's words.

"You know," she says finally, "you talk a whole lot about _your _choices. Like you're the only one having to shoulder the responsibility of what's happening here."

He opens his mouth to respond, but can't think of anything to dispute her.

"I saw a fortune teller once. Have I ever told you that?"she asks, taking an unexpected turn. Peter listens, chest heaving as he tries to concentrate on her talking. He wants to say something sarcastic, but it's just not in him. He shakes his head.

"She warn you about all this?" he manages.

"No," she says easily. "She told me I was going to die. That that was my fate." Peter's face scrunches. His ears tickle.

"That's not your fate." He says fiercely. Olivia chuckles softly.

"It's not my choice either, apparently." When Peter doesn't interrupt, she continues. "We're the best chance that Walter has." She works as she talks, her fingers pressing in his skin but the pain is pretty muted thanks to the spinning. "Hell, for all we know we're the best chance that anyone has to survive this. I'll do whatever it takes to fix whatever this is…dying isn't an option for me. Or for you."

Peter isn't convinced, his shoulders slumping. Olivia picks up on his mood and he feels her breath tickle the too long strands of his hair curling around his neck as she leans her chin against his shoulder.

"Sometimes the only choices we have left are bad ones. It's what we do with them that makes a difference." She finishes, slithering from behind him to sit beside him on the bed, wiping her hands on a towel to rid herself of his blood. The sight of his blood on her hands makes his stomach churn again. He looks back to the window, the light an electric tangerine color, sneaking past the edges like the world outside the building was bursting into flame. He squeezes his eyes shut and counts unsteadily to ten.

He hits thirty before the dizziness subsides enough for him to open his eyes again, and when he does he finds her green ones narrowed back at him, waiting. He spares another glance to the window, back to being perfectly dark and normal and shakes his head and barks a laugh.

"Everything okay in there?" Olivia asks, her face undecided at his peculiar behavior.

"Hallucinations, I think." He assures her with a quirked smile. The same tangerine color is burnt in his retinas and for a split second it's stained against Olivia's paper-white face. He flat-lines.

The fire. His thoughts grind together with so much momentum his brain locks up and erupts into a migraine.

"You," he says, his voice urgent as he sees the fire rippling across her skin, the knowing look on her face when he thought her name. "You did it. It was you." _Of course_, he thinks, _of course_.

Olivia's eyes narrow into slits. "Peter, what are you—" she tries to calm him down, but it's too late. His heart hammers in his chest as the pieces fall together. The fire. Olivia. The fire. Olivia…it all swirls together into one twisting word, spinning the edges of the room.

"Watch out," he warns, shoving her aside before toppling over to retch, the spinning finally merging with the low-setting nausea in his gut into a perfect storm. There's not enough food in his stomach so he coughs through the acidic yellow bile.

He hears her talking, and even though he can't make out the words, he recognizes the soothing tone of her voice. She nudges herself onto the cot next to him, running her blessedly cool hands over his neck, his forehead, letting him sputter until he's able to breathe again. He's exhausted.

She shifts, pulling his head down onto her shoulder and he wants to tell her that he knows and that he's sorry, but he can't think anymore as the blackness takes him.

This time he doesn't dream of Olivia.

He dreams of Walter.

Walter's dead eyes staring back from his waxy face, still wearing the blood stained robe they left him in. He's lost in the confines of the lab, running his fingers over the barriers keeping him captive, wandering aimlessly and waiting for Peter to come back to save him.

And in his dream, Peter does. He saves them all. He comes back for Walter and Astrid with the army of Massive Dynamic at his back and the cure in hand and saves them all.

Peter wakes this time like he's been sleeping for years, his body heavy and still woozy. But he feels more solid with the spinning subsiding and he can finally see his surroundings clearly. He's leaning against the wall, his neck sore as he twists it from side to side to loosen the stiffness.

The windows are blocking the sunlight, but there are streams still trickling in to let him know it must be early morning by now. He reaches around his shoulder with his good arm and touches his bandaged back, hissing at the pain still radiating under his fingers.

There's a warm pressure against his legs where they spill over the side of the cot. Upon closer inspection, he finds that the warmth is Olivia's head tilted against his knee. He leans away from the wall, careful to not jostle her as he looks at her face in the faint sunlight that brightens the room. She's asleep; eyes closed and her lead pipe lying forgotten against her accordion knees. There's a swell of affection that fills his chest, a wild rush of gratitude and he reaches out to smooth her hair away from where it's covering her eyes.

She wakes instantly, jerking away from his touch to scramble for the pipe that's rolled onto the floor.

"Hey, hey, it's okay." He overcompensates for startling her, reaching out to lay a soft hand on her shoulder. "Just me," he says, his eyes crinkling in amusement. "I didn't mean to frighten you."

Olivia takes an unsteady breath in and loosens her grip on the pipe and her face relaxes into annoyance.

"You didn't frighten me," she tells him irritably as she pulls herself to her knees. "I was just—" she starts, but then stops. She looks down to where she was sitting next to Peter; and her face falls. "I feel asleep."

Peter holds in his amusement.

"That's okay." He says, testing the stiffness in his arms as she unruffles her hair. "How long was I out?"

"All night. How do you feel?" she asks, pressing her hand against his forehead.

"Better." He says, leaning against her hand. He feels…like he's new. Broken away from everything up until this point.

"Thank you." He tells her.

"I didn't do anything-" she says, but he moves faster than he feels capable of, cupping her face in his palms to look at her seriously.

"-Olivia," he says, rounding the 'O' out on his tongue like he's blowing a bubble. "You saved me." He's not even talking about the bullet. He feels light, tingly, like he's approaching something brilliantly bright and infinite.

"You saved us." He elaborates, fingers unrelenting on the soft skin of her cheeks.

"You're delirious," she says lightly. "You lost a lot of blood…" she pulls away from his grasp, pressing her hands over his to pry his fingers away. He does feel delirious.

"Everyone died. Everyone. Shapeshifter. Resister. Everyone except you and me. I find that pretty remarkable."

Olivia doesn't answer, returning his charged gaze and she feels the electricity around them crackle.

"And I know you've been keeping something from me." He says, ignoring her nasty glare. "That you're still keeping it from me."

Olivia refuses to react, he feels her heart hammering against her pulse point and he smoothes the lines around her mouth away.

"You're being crazy." She says against his fingertips. Peter smiles. Maybe he is.

"Whatever it is, I trust you."

"Oh?" She goads. He holds on for too long and he feels her retreat, pulling out of his embrace as she sneaks a peak over his back.

"Maybe you should be a little more worried about the giant bleeding hole in your back."

"How 'bout we cauterize it?" Peter's voice drops and she sinks her fingernails into his shoulder to scramble out of his grasp.

"Olivia," Peter challenges, lifting off the cot to go after her, but his head spins as soon as he stands, the blood whooshing down his spine and he stumbles backward, Olivia instantly by his side, fingers crushing into his arm.

"Whoa there," she breathes into his face as he sways near unconsciousness. When he's able to pull his head above the murkiness of the water, he wraps his fingers around the bony muscle of her arms, holding her tight.

"The Cortexiphan," he says, her stony expression discouraging him. "You've done it before, the fire. The lab with the shapeshifter." She doesn't argue. He cocks his head to the side as he reads her.

"There're other side effects. Aren't there?"

Olivia's nod is so tiny that he's sure she doesn't realize she even did it. Her sigh is heavy.

"You knew where the shapeshifters were."

Her eyes are downcast and she licks her lips; bites the dry skin there. Another nod.

"Yes."

"Walter said the Cortexiphan works on perception." He says wearily. "He said you were always so…attuned. Something's changed, hasn't it?"

Olivia sighs and faces him. Peter feels deliriously excited. Like they've been given a second chance.

"I hear you…" she starts cautiously. Peter's expression is surprised but soft, letting her work through her thoughts without question. He parts his lips, his brow low.

"No specifics." She amends quickly. "And others too, though not as clearly…but it's more about how it _feels _than what I _hear._ I felt you, outside. When the gun was…" She sighs. "I felt you and I had this overwhelming…" she struggles. "I didn't want you to die. Then everything went black. That's all I remember."

She and Peter stare at one another for a long while as he processes the information.

"That's not exactly what I was expecting." He admits, finding her hand and twining his fingers through it.

"What weren't you expecting?" she mutters.

"For you to tell me the truth." He tells her softly.

He doesn't know where this outward display of affection is coming from, but he can always blame it on the blood loss later. But he feels like they've actually got a shot at this now, more than ever. Strangely enough, he's not upset learning that she can hear him. It just makes sense to him.

She sits in silence, letting him hold her hand without commenting. Letting him process. He knows she's expecting him to run in the opposite direction screaming. But he won't. He holds her hand even tighter.

"We can do this." He tells her. He feels woozy, but more alive than he's felt in months. He pulls her closer, guiding her head to his chest and revels in the warmth of her body. She stiffens at first in his embrace, but doesn't pull back.

"You can do this," he mutters into her hair, feeling her loosen against him, muscle by tight muscle as he runs his hands through the tangles in her hair. "We're going to make it."

"I'm glad you're so optimistic." She mumbles into his chest. He smirks.

"We're not far from crossing the border into New York. We can be at Massive Dynamic in as little as two days."

He feels her warmth settle through his arms, into his chest and exploding in every neuron. She's limp against him, her breath steady against his throat and he settles as best he can as he lets her sleep for once as he watches. He'll give her a few hours before they head back out and finish what they started.


	27. The Experiment, Part 1

Peter's newfound optimism was hedging from cheerful to downright annoying.

Not that she didn't appreciate his new and improved outlook on the apocalypse, being much more pleasant than the moody asshole he's been since leaving the lab, but his full-fledged and implicit trust in her "powers" was unexpected, and his unwavering conviction was…well, a lot of pressure.

Despite his insistance to leave earlier, it took two days for Peter's gunshot wound to heal enough for him to hobble around the lobby of the bunker; his enthusiasm making him stir-crazy. Olivia's busted ribs pained her greatly whenever she moved too quickly or tried to dig through a particularly heavy box in search of useful supplies. She wasn't looking forward to the heavy pack she'd need to haul to make the rest of the trip to New York. The steady pressure pushing down on her was like an anvil residing permanently on her chest. They'd found some extra clothing that wasn't military-inspired mixed in with the rest of the supplies: her shirt was a little too big, his a little too small, but they weren't covered in burnt skin and Peter's blood, so they worked well enough. Even despite the fact Olivia had to roll the sleeves of the worn grey shirt a few times so her hands could poke out the ends, she felt better.

* * *

><p>"Concentrate."<p>

"I can't when you keep interrupting." She snaps back.

They're standing on the rooftop of the building they've been holed up in, Peter watching Olivia expectantly as she attempts her second day of "target practice." Her assignment is easy enough: light shapeshifters on fire with her mind from a distance of a few hundred feet. Easy peasy.

"Just do what you did before." Peter suggests and she feels every cracked rib vibrate as she tries to focus on a particularly sluggish shapeshifter missing both legs as it pulls itself along on its belly, hand over hand, trailing entrails behind it like a busted parachute. Along with the faction of Resisters she accidently barbequed, she also appeared to have destroyed much of the neighboring population of shapeshifters. Which wasn't a bad thing, but a full day of trying to explode trees or dumpsters proved worthless.

"That's just it. I don't know _how _I did it before," she sighs. "It just happens." She's been staring so hard for so long at the thing she's gone cross-eyed, waiting to feel the same violent spark in her chest. But there's nothing, save for the frustration and she aches for her gun so she could just shoot the face off the damned thing instead. But it continues merrily on its way undisturbed, inch by inch, and it's seriously starting to piss her off.

"Maybe we should take a break." Peter's voice is soft, his hand gentle on her shoulder. She squeezes her eyes shut, pinching the bridge of her nose as she tries not to let herself be overwhelmed by the same defeat she recognizes from the lab. She was useless then; she's useless now.

"Maybe this isn't going to work." She says. She feels Peter's mood prickle but hold steady. Olivia had made a makeshift wrap for his bad arm, and in the daylight Peter's face is wild with bruises and gashes. He looks just about as bad as the zombies she's trying to light on fire.

"It's all right," Peter's words are strategic and meant to be comforting and that grates on her even more. "It's going to work. There's got to be another trigger we're not accounting for." He scrubs his chin, deep in thought.

Her face is pinched as he talks. "Sure," she says. "Sure." The frustration boils.

"Olivia," his face softer, his thoughts too hopeful, and her stomach churns. "This is going to work."

"How can you possibly know that?" she snaps, hoping to wipe the smug smirk off his face. She's wrong though, it doesn't work. If anything, he looks even more energized. Even more sure. He doesn't say anything, staring at her like she's amusing to him.

"You're so confident in something I can't possibly control," she hisses, resisting the urge to jab a finger into his puffed chest to deflate his optimism. "You're assuming it's something that_ can_ be controlled. I'm not a goddamned lighter, Peter. I just can't flick it on. And let's just say if I'm able to do it again, and _that's a big if, _then how do I know that I won't cross some beams and light you up too?" She's panting by the time she's finished, the sun hot on her face.

Peter's warmth still radiates all around him, and she wants to be upset at the intrusion of his comfort, because she's not done being pissed off. But he's casting off such a wall of unwavering support that she's just too exhausted to fight it off.

He reaches for her again. He smoothes his hand over her face, pulling back the hair clinging to her skin and his smile is bright. There's something new to the taste of him, the constant dread and anger from before just gone. He tastes differently, even though she can't name it.

He doesn't say anything. Maybe it's because he knows he doesn't have to anymore. She lets him pull her closer to him, wanting to push his hug away. But he doesn't hug her. He kisses her.

Sometimes he surprises her.

His kiss is unexpectedly gentle, languid even, like they've done it a hundred times over. They never really acknowledge the complicit nature of their relationship; and she's never really let herself to really prod at the feelings. He's important, she knows that. But admitting how much she needs him scares the shit out of her more than the zombies do. But the way his tongue slides against hers when he opens his mouth jolts her in a way that's not entirely unpleasant.

Shit.

When he pulls away she feels the loss overflowing. His smug grin returns, tickling the sides of her face and she can't find it in herself to be mad. Peter's face morphs as he regards her, his face flickering with a burning question he doesn't ask.

"What?" she asks, feeling the flush in her cheeks.

"Ok, I'm going to conduct an experiment," Peter says, his face guarded. "And in the interest of science, I'm going to ask you to not focus on what I'm about to do." Olivia doesn't have time to respond before he pulls her back in again, scrubbing his prickly jaw along the sensitive skin of her neck as he kisses her again. Her mouth drops open in her surprise and he takes the opportunity to nip his teeth against her neck as his good hand smoothes the skin below her ribcage.

She's a flickering ray of heat, his lips more forceful when they meet hers, and after the shock wears off, she crushes him to her. She feels his other arm wedged awkwardly between them but his good hand is left unimpeded as it creeps around the ticklish part of her hip. There's a pop when Peter breaks the kiss and she barely has time to open her eyes before something hits the side of her face, hard enough to make her stagger. There's a crack behind her ears and her vision blots and she's left with utter shock.

"You just slapped me." Her voice is high and ragged as she incredulously stares at him as his face splits open into a wide smile. He's a few feet back, hand raised between them like he's ready to run.

"Slapping sounds so unmanly. I'd prefer conducive to yield positive results." He says lightly. "But I am sorry about that, I really am." He says soothingly. When he's confident she won't take a swing back at him, he stares over the side of the roof and he laughs.

It takes her a second to follow his gaze, the heat hot on her face where he slapped her and her mouth falls opens.

"I think I figured out the trigger." He says aloud, still keeping far enough distance from her. Just in case.

The remains of the half-gored shapeshifter smolders in the distance.

* * *

><p>"Peter, this is stupid. <em>Suicidal." <em>Olivia moves to block him from the exit, ready to tackle him if she needs to, but when Peter gets like this it's hard to make him see reason.

Peter's been muttering to himself the last few minutes, pacing back and forth on the tarmac of the roof and coming to a very stupid conclusion and an even more reckless way to test it.

"It's me." He says.

"It's not you." Olivia counters. "And you going out there is just stupid." Peter stops; his eyes bright blue and noticing Olivia's subtle position in front of the fire escape that he's keen on getting to. She doesn't understand at all.

"You've already said that." He tells her, eyeing the door to the stairway they took before.

"It bears repeating when your plan is ludicrous." She mutters. "It's not you." She repeats, ready to go for his knees.

Peter laughs, wondering how he didn't see it before. How Walter didn't see it before.

"Okay, it's not entirely me." He accedes, hand up to block her. He's almost delirious with the possibilities, even if she doesn't buy into his plan. Yet. Her face relaxes.

"…But it's partly me." He adds quickly and her face turns rigid again. "Wait, just listen." He says, and grabs her arm to pull her to the edge of the rooftop.

"We already know your pyrotechnics are a reflex, a knee-jerk reaction of self preservation." He starts a million miles a second, pointing to the charred corpse still baking in the sun below on the scorched street. "You did it as a child during the Cortexiphan trials. You did it with the shapeshifter outside the lab when it snuck up on you. And you did it two days ago with enough firepower you destroyed a goddamned city block."

Olivia doesn't argue, looking down at the blast zone with a grim look.

"So the trigger is what? Whenever I'm startled?" she grumbles.

"Partly, but not entirely." Peter's trying to keep his voice low, but he's so excited that he's having a hard time keeping the words from reverberating through his chest.

"You can hear me," he says. She opens her mouth to argue and he waves her away. "You can_ feel_ me, is that right? You can with others too, but I'm different aren't I?" he doesn't need her to agree with him, he already knows.

"I'm the second trigger." He concludes confidently.

Olivia shakes her head, and he knows she's fighting hard against believing him.

"Olivia," he turns her to face him, her mouth hard. "There's a reason why I survived your explosion. Why I didn't turn into charcoal with the rest of the Resisters and the shapeshifters down there. And it's why you were able to harness the energy to use it on the shapeshifter now and not me. You won't do it to me." He's positively glowing. Olivia's face is tomato red, her ribs burning. She folds her arms so tightly over her chest that Peter isn't sure if she'll ever be able to unravel.

"Then what about Walter?" she huffs, the anger of being told she can control something she obviously can't makes her feel about as useful as an unloaded gun. "Why couldn't I save _him_?"

Peter's balks, fizzling slightly at her words but recovers enough to smile.

"You don't love Walter." He says simply, his face is sad as he says it. Her bruised ribs shatter and break.

* * *

><p>Peter knows he's right, that the equation he's formulated leads to a rational conclusion. His experiment on the roof already yielded the result he expected, even if she doesn't believe it. That's why they need to do this, to show her that she has the power to wield it because it's the only thing that's going to get them to New York with his back and her ribs.<p>

He's out in ground zero, Olivia still perched irate on the roof overhead, his boots scraping against the blackened tar as he wanders out, stepping over the dead bodies where they remain crusted to the place they died.

_It's going to be easy_, he thinks, his heart already pounding a little in his chest as he sees the first shapeshifter wander into view. He's so sure of his hypothesis that he'd locked the doors behind him in case temptation made him chicken out, leaving Olivia on the roof with a simple "I trust you," trying not to dwell on the disapproving look on her face as he descended the stairs.

"It's gonna work." He mutters aloud, wondering if Olivia can hear him. This particular shapeshifter is fresher, and if the camouflaged pants it's wearing is any indication, it used to be a Resister. Peter's palms sweat and he wipes them away just in case Olivia senses it. It hasn't noticed him yet, wandering around the graveyard to inspect the bodies. He feels what might be a twinge of regret as he wonders if it recognizes any of the casualties. It stumbles over the reddish entrails hanging over the belt from its destroyed stomach, pulling more bowels out with each step and it's without a doubt the most disgusting thing he's seen.

He takes a sharp, steadying intake of breath.

"Hey!" he shouts, waving his good hand in its direction. It turns its head to scowl in his direction and the breath sticks in his throat.

"C'mon Olivia." He mutters, trying to think positive, reassuring thoughts at her. There's a ripple of movement among the charred bodies that are splayed out down the block and his heads whips to figure out what it is: two more shapeshifters push themselves up from the rocky ground at his invitation, a Resister with half its face blasted off and a shorter male with red hair that matches its lopsided tie. His thoughts go a little sour.

"Shit," he grinds, taking a few steps back away from the shapeshifters and he sees the potentially fatal flaw in his plan. He'd assumed that Olivia had wiped out most of the neighboring population of shapeshifters. Apparently that was a miscalculation on his part. He backtracks to the useless refuge of the locked building and starts to feel the adrenaline wear off and give way to what a terrible fucking idea this was.

His foot catches on something on the ground and he stumbles, staggering over the side of the half mutilated corpse of the shapeshifter Olivia just ignited, his breath blasted from his lungs and his back erupting into fire. He pushes back to sturdy footing, fisting his sling to push aside as all three shapeshifters make their way through the bodies toward him and he's ready to run.

He spares a glance to the rooftop, straining to see Olivia against the overcast of the sun that's shining over her shoulders, her outline blurry as he scurries back out of the path of the shapeshifters who approach, the gutted one in the lead.

"Anytime you're ready, sweetheart." He shouts up to her, not even sure she can hear him but he needs to do something considering he's depending solely on her.

"You can do it," he grumbles when his back finally presses against the brick of the building. He can see the sunken eyes of the former Resister as it closes in on him, arm outstretched and making sucking noises with its erratic hissing. His stomach drops when he realizes he recognizes it as it comes closer. Without the cap he didn't notice it's what's left of the woman Resister, void of her gun and most of her insides spilling through the material of her shirt to the ground as she stomps them in her jagged walk. Although, with her jaw missing and the intestines she's jump roping, he's not entirely surprised he didn't notice at first. He wonders how she managed to avoid the worst of Olivia's first fire. He doesn't dwell too much on that now that she's close enough that he can smell the stink of her split and trampled bowels.

His arms tremble from the physical strain of not doing anything; stifling his gut reaction to fall into the very reasonable and overwhelming fight or flight response. Especially when that response is split between finding something hard and heavy to swing and turning to run like a maniac as far and as fast as he can. But he's got to trust her now, or everything would be for nothing and they'd be back to being dead before they'd leave.

"Olivia," he growls, feeling the brick grinding against the stitches in his back, probably tearing them but the woman Resister wheezes through the holes in her neck and he feels the fear overwhelm him when nothing happens.

He covers his head, presses himself hard against the building, praying on the offhand that Olivia gave up long ago and might get to the door in time so he can live. He squeezes his eyes shut, muttering over and over again "I trust you," and hopes it's enough. He lets the irony of his own stupid idea be the last thought he ever has.

There's a loud crack and he feels a whoosh of heat sharp against his skin and thinks it's strange, because he doesn't feel the pain he expected at all. He looks away from the cradle of his arm and almost yelps as the body that was standing a few feet away from him a few seconds ago blackens in the fire, dropping to its knees before toppling over. There's another crack in the distance and the second faceless one explodes like a human bomb, followed closely by the third, the red tie now charred black.

When he's able to move his legs, he pushes away from the wall, his back a steady, throbbing pain. He strains to find her on the rooftop, the frame of her body almost eclipsed by the fiery orange from the sunlight exploding behind her, and his eyes water from squinting when he sees her: Olivia's hair blazes out over her shoulders like she'd been shocked by electricity, and even though her face is obscured, he swears he sees her smiling.


	28. The Experiment, Part 2

A/N: we're almost finished here, folks! I won't spoil how many, but there aren't many chapters left. Thank you to everyone who's been so wonderfully supportive of this story. A special shout to the lovely Zombie Tarot who's been my encouraging little rock during this process. All feedback welcome.

* * *

><p>It takes a full fifteen minutes before Olivia reaches the bottom floor to unlock the door to let Peter back into the building. His jittery excitement gives way to a slow shock when he takes her in when she cracks open the door. She looks worse than the first time she'd accidently fried the first shapeshifter, leaning the majority of her weight against the frame of the door, sleeves pushed to her elbows. Her hair's a mess of singed ends and her pupils are blasted wide and black as she looks at him. He's afraid to move, frozen at the threshold of the building, rooted there by her haggard breathing and short nails grinding into the drywall surrounding the door so hard that she's digging out plaster.<p>

"Olivia?" he asks, even though he knows the question's stupid, _she's standing right in front of him_, but the foul look etched on her face is decidedly…not so much Olivia as it is animal. Despite his hurried need to get into the safety of the building, he takes a preemptive step back. He feels the charge radiating around her, cloaking her skin and bone and he almost hears the buzz. He tries to think back to the lab when she exploded the first shapeshifter by accident, wondering if she looked this menacing before or if he'd just blocked it out in his panic.

"Took you long enough," he jokes to cover his nervousness, not daring to move until he knows it's safe.

"Sorry," she says, her voice raw as she pushes herself away from the frame. Just like that, the feral look flickers and fades away. "There were a lot of stairs." She pushes too hard though and Peter finally reacts, catching her around the middle as she totters, still surprised when he isn't electrocuted in the process. Her recovery is lightning-fast, her eyes wide but still shadowed in darkness as she pulls herself back together. He touches her forehead to see if she's as hot as he remembers.

"I did it." She says into his collar. Peter's grin is genuine, his lips brushing along the hot skin of her neck, her coppery smell both invigorating and calming.

"You did," he says, "you did." When he's confident she can stand on her own, he palms her heated face and pulls her into him. His kiss is sloppy; he's unable to contain the way his hands shake against her, feeling her respond, shifting her weight into him.

"You were amazing," he laughs, unnerved by the way her pupils eat all the color around them. "How do you feel?"

Olivia's hands are bunched into the material of Peter's shirt, not quite ready to hold her own weight. She gingerly tests her limbs, comparing the stiffness from her other outbursts. Then, she'd felt like she'd been hit and run over by a train. Even when she woke up from the devastation in the street there was a looming wash of powerlessness. But, despite the feeling of being a burnt fuse, she feels better than she expects. She has a lot of energy bubbling up like she needs to expel some extra charge.

"I feel okay," she censors, feeling the heat welt through the pores of her skin.

"Any nausea? Shortness of breath?" Peter fires off and he sounds a lot like Walter and that makes her chuckle.

"What?" she demands when his face drains of color.

"This is new." Peter's voice takes on a hard edge when he runs a thumb against the skin on the underside of her nose. When he pulls back she sees the blood. Her blood. Peter's face goes from excitement to concern, his jaw tightening down like Fort Knox.

Olivia recovers quickly, swiping her hand to wipe away the rest of the trickling blood leaking from her left nostril. Peter's mind reels, Olivia detecting the complexity of his worry.

"It's nothing," she assures his worried face, wiping the evidence away before Peter has a chance to prod further. "Really, I feel—"

"Fine?" Peter finishes her sentence. Olivia bristles under his gaze.

"No," she tells him, "I was going to say I feel great. Probably just gave myself an aneurysm watching you attempt to outrun a gang of shapeshifters." She doesn't dare reach out to see if the bleeding's stopped. She figures he'll let her know if it hasn't. She can tell he doesn't like her joke.

"How's your back?" she deflects.

Peter chews on the inside of his cheek; deciding if it's worth badgering her further. She feels him give up before he says anything.

"I think the stitches may have torn." He answers sheepishly, finally feeling the slow burn against the blade of his shoulder. "You up for checking?"

Olivia smiles over the hum of her fingertips.

"C'mon Scarecrow." She says.

"Scarecrow?" Peter's snort is indignant, "does that make you Dorothy?"

Olivia huffs, but thinks seriously for a moment and decides maybe it's pretty apt to their situation.

Olivia helps strip him of his clothing, taking extra care of his arm when he gives up his manly façade to wince at the pain. He was right; the first half of the stitches have torn through the skin, blood clotting thickly over her handy work. Peter's squatting backwards on a fold up chair twisted between his knees, digging his fingers into the rusted metal as Olivia sits on the military firmness of the cot. She's got the Resisters' first aid kit propped open beside her.

"You got any of that morphine left?" she asks, as she peels the rest of the bandage away, prodding along the swollen edges as they're exposed.

"I'm never taking that stuff again, thanks. If you happen to have any more scotch though, I could be persuaded." Peter snorts, trying hard not to twitch. His skin is a thick tatter of hide where the stitches have torn, crusting yellow on the sides in a way that makes Olivia's stomach churn.

"That bad, huh?" Peter says when Olivia takes too long to answer. There's a rasp of breathing when she touches a torn edge, garnering an angry sound from Peter and a filmy substance on her fingers.

"It's infected." She tells him.

"Great," Peter mumbles. "Just great. Of course it is. Just when you thought we'd catch a damn break."

Olivia reaches out for the white sewing kit. Peter's hand is lightening fast and stops her.

"I'm not going through _that _again." He says darkly, indicating the box. He twists to find Olivia's face, his brow angry. He carefully tries to collect himself, loosening his hold on her, but making no attempt to completely let her go.

"Please," he says, "please spare me my manhood and just tape it and hope it stays until we get to New York." He doesn't even try to humor her. He knows she can see through the bullshit.

When she lifts her eyebrows in one giant question mark he huffs, scrubbing his hand over his face, debating whether his stupid stunt was worth it.

"It wasn't," Olivia answers his unspoken thought, raising the hairs on his neck. He's not sure if he likes her being so well tuned to him. He lets her slip through his fingers to graze the pattern of skin and there's a strangled noise that he realizes is coming from him.

_Definitely not worth it _he agrees silently.

He bites down as best he can as Olivia goes about taping him back together, fisting his hands and snarling curses so filthy that Olivia can't help but listen.

"Have you found any antibiotics in the looted goods?" he asks when he finishes the last angry stream of invectives.

She shakes her head even though he's facing the wrong way to see it. She'd been through most of the remarkably organized untouched rations, and while they'll be able to make it to New York with some weaponry and supplies, antibiotics have been in short supply since the outbreak.

She flattens the last bit of tape and is distracted by Peter's back. She tries to think about the handful of times she'd seen him naked and realizes that she's never taken the time to properly enjoy him before. His shoulder blades are perfect little triangles under the soft mold of his skin, and there's a fleeting flush of want and endearment and a need to touch him.

So she does.

His recoil is understandable, but once he realizes she's not jabbing him anymore he leans into her touch, his breathing evening out.

"We should leave," she breathes casually but without a hint of truth, running her fingers to knead the stiff muscles of his neck, the urge to touch winning her over. She's still too fueled up from the roof; too excited by Peter's firm skin under her touch as she deepens the pressure.

"I know," he answers. He's surprised that she can switch between being goddamned menacing to affectionate on a dime. He likes to think it has a little to do with him.

Her fingers run along the shaggy hair around his neck, pushing through the roots gently, feeling the static build up in her chest again; blooming brightly to fill her with a flush of warmth. There's a fleeting fear that if he's right and he is a trigger for her abilities, maybe the next time she won't be able to distinguish between…whatever it is that causes her response and him. Peter leans his head into her hand like an attention-starved dog.

She was terrified on the roof watching Peter risk his life. Angry. Angry at him for putting her in that situation with his implicit trust in her to save him; angry at herself when she watched helplessly when things went wrong and she knew she was going to watch him get mauled over a stupid misguided attempt to help her control her ability. Or whatever it was. That anger, that flicker of possessiveness kicked her hard in the chest like an engine turning over and roaring to life and then it wasn't so much that she was trying to make it happen…it just did. Then it was all she could do to focus away from Peter. She felt the heat drain her of everything: pain, anger, frustration.

Then she was excited; ecstatic that they'd cheated death again. That she protected him. But how many chances did they get though before they'd have to repay the universe for their infinite amount of do-overs?

She must have been mulling over the possibilities for a while because when she realized Peter was staring back at her, catching her hand against the stubble of his cheek, the look on his face is gentle.

"This doesn't seem fair," he says in a voice better suited for a lover, gently laying a hand over hers to seal her warmth to his face. "You know everything I'm thinking, but I don't anything about what you are."

His tone isn't accusatory.

"You know me better than you think," she comments when Peter turns to face her. She can't keep the thread of reproach out of her voice, the violation she knows she's committed, and the guilt of not letting him on it earlier. Peter surprises her with his smile, rising from his place on the chair to drop between her knees so they're the same height. He smoothes his hands down her shoulders, taking great time and effort to memorize the skin under the oversized grey t-shirt.

"You always manage to surprise me," he tells her, pushing the hair over her shoulder. His touch is firm against her neck, pulling her into a kiss that she doesn't expect. The kiss is soft, delicate and so entirely unlike Peter.

"Another experiment?" she asks.

His response is immediate but never spoken: _No_.

His smile is wider as he deepens the kiss, swiping his tongue over her bottom lip. She pulls back just a millimeter, and he grabs the side of her face and pulls her back to him.

"We need to leave," she mumbles, feeling Peter's path diverge to skim down her neck. She's seriously close to letting him push her off course.

"We can wait another half-hour," he says wickedly, his fingers following the path laid out by his mouth. "New York will still be there."

His touch is too delicate; too gentle against the heated tapestry of her skin and she makes her intentions clear as daylight with an angry stamp of her nails into his biceps to try to encourage him along. He's cleared her of her shirt, her tank top stained against her smoldering skin, all while Peter continues his snail's pace of unraveling her of the rest her clothing.

He winces against the sharpness of her insistence, but he's not about to be bullied into rushing. Who knows how many more chances he has to touch her? He skims his lips against the soft skin at the crook of her neck, feeling her throaty sigh against his cheek and her fingers twisting in his hair.

"Peter," she pleads and he can't help but chuckle.

"I'm not going to be responsible for crushing your ribs." He says into her neck, not allowing himself to be distracted. "Then how would I get to New York without my own personal flame thrower?" He earns a snort for his effort.

She pulls his face back by his hair a few inches, her flushed cheeks casting a glint of her grin to show he's not entirely in trouble.

"Flame thrower? _That's _the best you come up with?"

He gives her a shrug before leaning back in. She leans just out of reach.

"You still think I can do this? That I can help get us there?" She's looking at him with such abashed optimism that he can't help but feel a rush of affection for her. It flushes through his chest

"Do you?" he asks instead.

She searches his eyes, feeling him out to see if there's any trace of apprehension, any spot of fear. He knows what she'll find so he doesn't even bother trying to hide it.

"Yes." She finally answers.

He kisses her without the eagerness he feels, tracing her lips delicately as he palms her face to seal her to him as she finally relaxes under him. His thoughts are bright, soft and full of things he'd never dare say to her. His kiss deepens again, floored by the scrape of her teeth against his bottom lip and his resolve starts to splinter.

"Do you know how beautiful you are?" he tries to say, but it's caught in his throat when she shifts to pull him closer, her knees digging against his sides. She doesn't say anything back, her arms roping around his middle to tug, pulling him onto the military cot next to her.

"We need to go find a tree somewhere?" Peter husks, sliding Olivia's knee across his lap to straddle him, foreheads bent together. She takes a quick intake of breath as the pain throbs in her chest and Peter's hands flatten against her back to help support her against him. She feels his worry prickle but she doesn't want to lose the momentum they're building.

"Olivia?" his voice steady, the line in his forehead shadowing his concern.

"S'kay," she manages, straightening against him, holding against his neck to take some of the pressure off. "Stopping now would be worse." She assures him, her eyes void of any color when she looks at him and dares him to try to argue.

Peter isn't convinced, refusing to move so Olivia shows him rather than tries to explain herself. She leans back to shift onto his lap and breathes easier when his immobile fingers now dig into her skin and the returned kiss is so fierce she feels the walls he tried hard to build up tumble with the momentum of a hurricane. His fingers trace through the material of her tank, nails scraping and it's not long before his fingers creep lower to pull the material up and over her head to join the shirt that's long been forgotten. He pushes her flat against him, feeling the charge of her skin against his chest. She reaches between them and there's the whoosh of the fly on his jeans unzipping.

"Half-hour?" he groans against her mouth as he raises his hips to help her persistent fingers.

"New York'll still be there." She echoes, and stops him from saying anything more with her mouth.


	29. New York

Peter finds that he can't not touch her; she's wrapped helically around the axis of his brain and coded deeply into his DNA. The vibrant pull of her through his veins borders on violent, and the acute certainty of how much he pulls at her too is exhilarating, even if she doesn't like to admit it like he does. That fact doesn't entirely bother him though, he's so completely unguarded about his feelings (without saying them outright, because _Christ_, he's not suicidal) and they need each other to survive. If there's one thing that Peter knows, it's a sure thing when he sees it. And he's damn sure she'll be the one who's going to live. She'll make it to Massive Dynamic at whatever the cost to save the world, and he's banking on that. He knows that she needs him to trigger her abilities, and he needs her to tie him to whatever's left of this godforsaken planet. If she doesn't make it, well, he hasn't even come up with an alternative. It simply isn't an option.

He thinks back to Iraq, the exact moment that she came into his life and spiraled him onto a path he'd never intended to take. At the beginning of the apocalypse, after the first shapeshifter appeared, when things were at their worst and people were dying and changing at exponential rates, he thought back to his life before Olivia and wondered if things wouldn't have been better if he'd ignored her pleas and stayed in Iraq.

He can't imagine why his life's path would be filled with such pain and misery if there wasn't something to show for it. And he's pretty sure the end of the path always led to Olivia.

That's why this was going to work. He'd see to it or die trying. His mother always told him he was irrationally stubborn; myopic to the point of carelessness. He imagines she'd probably say the same about Olivia.

"What'cha scavenging for?" her voice startles him, his back aching as he stuffs the contents of her things back into the pouch he was supposed to be watching. Olivia stands over his crouched form, hands on the swell of her cocked hip, eyebrow quirked as he shovels her things back together.

"Jesus Christ almighty, could you try to not give me a heart attack this close to Massive Dynamic?" Peter sputters, lifting up on worn knees to hand back the bag she abandoned when she disappeared into the distance after a full day and a half of the slow trek through Connecticut, finally stopping them to hobble off to find an acceptable place to pee. "Thought you had the aspirin." Her amused face stutters into concern, lifting a hand to his forehead that he instantly swipes away.

"Fever?" she asks, sidestepping the bag completely to lay her hand on his face. He stands still enough to let her, rolling his eyes but evening it out by flashing an impatient smile.

"I've got a headache," he says as he holds her bag out for her to take. "Just a headache. No fever, no chills. One hundred percent recovering thanks to Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman." She gives him a skeptical look, taking the bag and knowing he's not being completely honest but she knows well enough to let it go so they don't linger.

Her face catches in the light and he notices the gaunt slices of her features; the way her face is paler than usual. His eyes trickle lower and his heart sinks.

"Another nosebleed?" his question is more of a statement, reaching out to trace the remnants of blood stained under her nose. It's her turn to wave away his concern. The subject of the nose bleeds have been a strictly taboo discussion since they started back on their pilgrimage. Not that he gave much of a damn about confrontation. She shoulders away from him to grab her bag.

"Such a baby," he catches her mutter just loud enough for him to hear. He watches the swing of the braid hanging down her back, matching his memory of the pebbles hidden beneath her naked skin and the image of the last time he tasted her floods his extremities and he's distracted again.

"Your hair's so long," he comments as a gesture of peace, resisting the urge to touch his fingers to the strands. He shoulders his own pack instead and makes his way after her, kicking some crumbling asphalt out of his way.

"Speak for yourself, hippie." She tosses back. His snort isn't manly as he tries unsuccessfully to mash his hair back down to his scalp. They've restocked their bags with rations and water, found a pretty beat up Sig and a box of .38 bullets for it before they abandoned the shelter of the Resister building, but they didn't come across a razor or scissors to do anything about the state of their hair. A haircut isn't really topping the list of needs at the present moment.

They were shocked at the smoldering rubble that waited for them as they ventured into Yonkers. It looked like the military had dropped an atomic bomb and swallowed everything into eternal darkness. Neither one of them said anything out loud, but Peter has the suspicion it's exactly what happened. It should have soothed Peter more than it put him on edge, if there's nothing left, then there's no shapeshifters. And they haven't been met with any. No Resisters, no people, no trees. No signs of civilization. Nothing but crumbling buildings and empty, blackened streets. There's a haunting stretch of worry to how far the destruction touches that he can't worry about. They just need to get to Massive Dynamic. They need to keep walking.

There was danger hiding in every darkened shadow; behind every destroyed building when they first arrived. It made Olivia's intestines twist in her stomach, her hands never losing the tremor that she had to conceal from Peter's watchful eye. But with nowhere to pinpoint her focus, or her fear, she feels like she's trying to keep herself from exploding as they walk. The overwhelming sense of rising dread is palpable.

"That's the first thing I'm gonna do when we get to Massive Dynamic," Peter says conversationally, distracting Olivia from curling and uncurling her fingers into her palm. They quickly cross the devastation across George Washington Bridge. "Shave my whole goddamned head." He ruffles his shaggy hair to illustrate.

"Oh, I bet you have a funny shaped head," Olivia says, trying to quickly put distance between them and the sinking hole, trying not to take it as a failure, that the demolished city is an indication of what they'll find at Massive Dynamic. She hopes the distance will shake off the encompassing black cloud that's threatening to scramble out of every available pore. She's given herself a nauseating headache trying to keep herself together. "Like an egg." She manages, and Peter shoots her a nasty glare, reaching out to pull playfully on her braid, because he's feeling particularly brave.

It startles her enough to give him a particularly stony look of disapproval, her pulse quickening and her hands shaking so much she stuffs them in her pockets.

"You shouldn't sneak up on me like that." She warns.

"Or what?" Peter says mockingly, "You'll shoot me? I'm the one with the gun for once." He's juvenile and obnoxious and he knows it. "Best you can do is try to take another swing when I'm not expecting it if it makes you feel better."

"That's if you're lucky." She pulls her hair away from his clingy fingers. She feels exposed out here in the open, mixed between feeling relieved that they haven't been met with any dangers to put her powers to the test, and the haunted feeling that it would be so much easier if they saw anything other than destruction. His touch is too soothing, and out of the confines of a refuge, it feels like a weakness. She's worried if she lets her guard down she'll detonate.

She feels like cracked concrete, ready to break at any moment. The headaches are worse the further they travel, a migraine erupting when they first reached the border to New York. Yonkers was physically painful; the invisible danger everywhere and with it a surge of protectiveness so powerful she had to stumble away to put distance between her and Peter to keep herself from retching in front of him, sputtering something about needing a place to pee before doubling over behind the protection of an old hot dog stand, finding coils of blood among the food rations she threw up and a bloody nose that she quickly wiped away.

She doesn't dare share it with Peter; his concern over her would be detrimental to their mission, and they can't afford to lose any more time. Peter's back isn't healing as quickly as she would like, and the longer they go the better chance he has for the infection to get worse. She knows it's dangerous to keep things from him at this point, but the way he looks at her now, the tenderness of his voice…deception is better than distraction because time isn't a luxury they have to waste.

"Wait," he says, grabbing her forearm to halt her when he realized she'd stopped paying attention. She freezes instantly, trying to focus her gaze to their surroundings but the migraine keeps her from being able to feel anything but Peter's razor sharp focus. Peter grabs the loaded Sig out of his bag with his free hand, the other clamping on Olivia's arm. She hones in on the hard fingers of Peter's hand, the warmth spreading over the skin even through the layers of clothing.

"I don't hear anything." She says after a long period of silence. There's absolutely no noise around them. No birds, no movement. Nothing. Peter isn't convinced so she stays alert, letting him wander in front of them a few feet ahead and pretending not to mourn the loss of his touch. There's a snap in the distance.

His reaction is immediate; spinning around with the gun raised and ready. He finally makes out the figure in the distance, belonging to the remains of a small shapeshifter clamoring toward them. It's a few hundred feet back, a ghost of a boy who's more ash than skin, pieces flecking off as it moves at a snail's pace. It's jaw hangs open and he can just almost make out the grey ash it breathes out.

Peter hesitates.

Olivia doesn't.

Peter had startled her; she'd sensed the danger behind them, but the gun in Peter's hand turned in her direction too quickly and the pull in her chest flickered before she could stop it, the migraine splitting her head open as it bloomed, the charge becoming painful as it zipped up her bones to electrocute her. She can't feel her legs, the blackness forcing her to her knees, the nausea overwhelming but she can't even turn her head as the pain crests.

"Olivia!" Peter shouts, and she feels his hands on her, the sickening feeling that her brain is hemorrhaging through her nose again like a faucet, coughing through the stickiness that's trapped in her throat that she can't quite get out and she chokes on the blood as she tries to breathe.

The spinning subsides as everything fades back into focus. She first feels Peter's hands on her face, then in her mouth as his fingers scoop out the blood and vomit caught there and she quickly gags before she's able to breathe again. She blinks through the tears stinging her eyes until she can make out Peter's face from behind the veil of clouds distorting her vision, and she suddenly wishes she couldn't see him at all.

His face is frozen rigid in disbelief and shock, his eyes wild as he turns her face to the side to help open her airway. She tastes blood, smells it and she tries to spit what's left in her mouth to the blackened earth he's directing her to. Breathing burns, scorching her throat and expanding painfully in her lungs as she pulls in the stale taste of the air that surrounds them.

"Can you swallow?" he asks her, and she wants to hear his snarky joke or the rough guffaw of his laugh, but it doesn't come, instead he waits for the nod of her head before he lifts the canteen to her mouth so she can drink. She swishes the tasteless water in her mouth, spitting out the lingering acidic flavor before she can take a pull to soothe her aching throat.

Being able to breathe evenly calms her nerves a bit, reaching out to grab for Peter to support her to rise to her knees. She hears a hiss as she tightens her hold on the hand smoothing her face and she's surprised and horrified by what she sees.

"Peter, my god." she says, her voice hoarse. The pads of his hand are laced by a sliver of red skin stretched tight across his palm, like he grabbed onto a live wire and couldn't let go.

Peter ignores her reaction, pulling his hand away and forces her to drink more from the canteen.

"Can you breathe?" he asks and she catches the raised intensity of his pain through the murky waters of her head caving in, and she can't make out the shock of whatever happened. She sticks a palm to his chest to push him far enough away to let her sit up and scrabble to her feet to look at their surroundings.

"Your hand," she says, but on closer inspection finds his hands suffering identical burns: two angry scars that puff away from the skin; his left hand worse than the right, matching the same red blotch that's almost a fine sheen in places and covered in blood.

"It's your blood," he says as she traces his hands with her blurry eyes until the bloody nose that's still openly flowing seeps into her mouth. She's forced to release his hands to reach up to wipe her nose on her sleeve. Peter snaps to grab her wrist, painfully spiking in the hazy field of her periphery and she knows he didn't mean to do it on purpose.

"Let me get the first-aid kit," he says, reaching for her pack that's laying haphazardly in the debris. "Between my back and your nose, we don't need any more unwanted attention." He tries to keep his voice light, not letting the rising heat in his hands overwhelm him into panic. He finds a clean wad of gauze and gingerly wipes the blood away from Olivia's face and mouth. She sits and stays still enough to let him clean her up. She takes the opportunity to look around.

She sees him grind down hard on his jaw, and looks past his shoulder when he turns to tuck away the disgusting gauze to find another wad. Where she assumed the shapeshifter was before is now a bag of burning bones, the grey smoke raising up from it yards away. Had he tried to put out the fire with his hands? How'd he get back so quickly? Was she out longer than she thought?

"What did I do?" she asks, because there's no other explanation. Peter looks pained, his face pale as he attempts to hide whatever it is she's done. He helps pull her up, supporting her on his unscathed wrists until she's standing.

"It wasn't your fault." He says with an edge that tells her that it absolutely was her fault.

"I crossed the streams, didn't I?" Even as she says it, she knows it's what happened. The last thing she remembers was the barrel of the gun pointed in her direction even though she knew, _knows_, that Peter'd never in a million years pull it on her. She felt the bitter pull of the shock but doesn't remember with any amount of certainty what followed.

Until she sees the gun glinting against the street and everything becomes painfully clear.

"Don't even worry about it," Peter cuts in when she sees the gun. "Takes the edge off my back, so maybe I should be thanking you." He shuffles her away from the place where the melted weapon lies against a nest of fluttering newspapers, the corners long since burnt so that she can't make out the headlines. Her hands shake.

"I wasn't thinking," he grins, but it's too tight for his face. "I shouldn't have pulled a gun in the direction of the person who can start fires with her mind." There's panic behind his eyes and he knows it. He tries to push away the image of her washed-out face, her eyes flashing black as soon as he pulled the gun, felt the charge of her reaction pinpointed square on the gun before it turned white-hot in his hands, sticking to the skin and the horrible burning that followed before he was able to toss it aside. She'd scared him in that instant, the look on her face not her, and he was truly frightened for his life.

It does little to make her feel better.

Her vision's blurry at the thought that she did this to him; her head a pounding drum steady on her skull. He's careful to not use his burnt hands as he steadies her on her feet.

"Peter," she argues, her hands wrapping around the frame of his wrist. His bored face would almost be convincing if she couldn't sense the white heat of lingering pain flushing against her like a second skin. Her head feels so heavy. "There's more you want to say."

"Why didn't you say anything?" he blurts, all the words blending together in his haste. Olivia focuses, her mouth opening to say something in retort, but it doesn't get past her teeth.

"About what?" she says innocently.

His calculated face crushes her. His cautious fingers pull the strands of hair matted to her face and the spiraling defeat washes over her and she knows it's bad. He sees something in her face that startles him and he backtracks, eyes glued to the burns on his hands.

"This is such bullshit." his voice is angry, swooshing the air from her lungs and her head cracks in pain. "You knew, and you didn't tell me. After everything, Olivia. You're still lying to me."

His outburst catches her off guard. She steps back from him, feeling her own anger reverberate against his own. She has to stifle it down so she doesn't let it overwhelm her. His anger is hot on her skin.

"I'm fine—" she starts, but stops dead at his murderous glare. She backtracks, retreating into her own anger and gives up trying to mislead him. "What's the point of scaring you? We are going to make it. This is just a setback, just a…" her rambling is cut short.

Peter's miles away, listing the possibilities, calculating everything he's witnessed and trying to formulate the variables into something that isn't fucking terrible.

"This is bad, isn't it?" she says for him.

Peter hesitates, looking at the ways her eyes flicker black; the red spots in the whites where she must have burst capillaries. He feels so stupid.

"I don't know," he says, but the way his eyes crinkle sadly at the corners turns her stomach. "I don't know." He repeats louder, with more angry conviction. He pulls away from her, his back spasming from the exertion of his brewing tantrum.

"This isn't fair," he nearly shouts as he paces, Olivia left helpless to watch. "This isn't fucking fair."

She tries to quiet him, but she makes it only two steps before she stumbles, lightheaded and overexerted. He's back beside her to snag her elbow to steady her, but that makes it worse.

"This was supposed to work," he mutters, pulling her tight and trying to avoid eye contact. He can't.

"This was supposed to be how we made it. How we could save Walter, how we could save everyone and I didn't even think about the consequences." He's back to shouting.

"Keep your voice down," Olivia warns, but her voice cracks at the end and that only furthers Peter's tirade.

"Or what? Someone in this ground-zero of a fucking town will hear me?" He's mad sounding, the guilt and anger bursting through his chest.

"It's just a nose-bleed," she steadies, trying to reach out for his flying limbs. This must have been how she looked to him when she had her own mini-meltdown. His ache is more terrifying than she remembers her own, watching him bang around in his fury over her.

"It's not." His voice goes grave, lower and baritone and goose bumps spread across her arms. "I don't know what this is, but I know it's worse than what you're actually telling me. _Don't even tell me it's not." _He spits out and Olivia eats her retort, stewing in fuming anger.

"I feel…different," she finally says. Peter stops then, taking unsteady steps in her direction. "I'm worried that I'm losing control of it. It's everywhere. Everywhere's dangerous. I can't shake it."

Peter can't touch her, his hand rising as if to reach out to her, but he stops, and lets it drop between them. She feels his whirlwind of emotions: the fear, the pain, the horror. He looks at her differently, she sees herself reflected in his eyes like she's something dangerous, and it's a worse hurt than if he'd kicked her in the chest.

"I'm the trigger," he mumbles, scrubbing his hand over his jaw. "I can activate you." It's lacking the excitement from earlier; it's sad. Remorseful. It's pity.

_Yeah, _she wants to say but doesn't bother. She waits for him with a burning migraine and a pathetic need for his unwavering optimism to make her feel less broken. His hesitation is a sledge hammer.

"But I don't know how to turn you off." He finally says, the wind carrying his voice away.

"Hey, mister!" A voice calls, startling them both. Peter spins, stepping in between the meek sounding shout and Olivia, shouldering her out of the way when he hears her sudden intake of breath. A knobby-kneed teenage boy stands a few yards away, too thin and too terrified-looking to be a Resister. His shotgun is trained on them without knowledge or the foresight not to shake and Peter digs his hand into Olivia's arms to keep her stationary. The kid's hunched over, his bronze hair matted in thick clumps above his ears, his hands snaking out of clothing too big for his meager frame. The air cracks around them with electricity.

Peter wants to laugh at the injustice of it all.

"Hand over your bags," the kid says with a fizzled authority that's shaky and uncontrolled. Peter feels the heat radiating off of Olivia, twists to find her eyes clamped shut, her face flushing red and he feels time slip away as the sweat beads on her forehead. He grabs her shoulders and pushes.

Maybe her last outburst drained her enough to keep from exploding again. He's not sure what will happen to her if she has another outburst, but an aneurysm seems just as likely as spontaneous combustion at this point. He tries to cover her completely with his presence and away from the danger behind them.

"Get out of here," he shouts at the spindly teenager, sparing an outstretched hand to keep him from coming any closer. The angry snarl of Peter's voice makes the kid step back, and Peter keeps thinking _keep going! Keep going! _But determination sets in and the kid raises the gun up further and takes another step in their direction.

"Just give me the bags!" he shouts back, and Olivia grinds her fingers into Peter's skin, nails stamping as she doubles over. "They're right behind me, mister, and you don't want me to blow your leg off so the zombies can get you." Peter hopes it's a lie.

"You don't know what you're doing, and get that fucking gun out of my face!" Peter yells as he pushes Olivia back further, trying to put distance between them, seeing the way her body's shaking trying to stifle her response and praying that the kid has the good sense to run. Her face is bone white and he tries another tactic. "Take them! Take the bags and get out of here!"

"Olivia, don't," he murmurs into her ear, cheek pressed against her heated skin. Her eyes open, completed eclipsed by the black, more capillaries bursting and spreading across the slivers of white that are left.

"_Don't_," he orders, his voice unable to squash the panic rising there. The kid's screaming at them in the background, and Peter's terrified that Olivia will burst out of her skin with the exertion of trying to contain herself. "It's just me, it's just me." He wraps both his arms around her, crushing her to his chest, trying to murmur soothingly into her hair.

"Peter," her voice is different, not her own and he knows he's losing her. "Run."

She's a spinning tornado, feeling the heat build and quicken around her chest, and she's unable to cling to anything coherent. She digs into Peter's skin despite her warning, breathing in his scent, remembering the long gone smell of peaches on his mouth but the pressure is so much, so hot and it's burning her from the inside out. She feels her eyes bleed, the pain unbelievable.

She catches Peter's soft murmuring on her neck, but he's miles away, the fear undiluted and raging under her skin. The boy's voice is sinister, his presence dangerous despite his round baby face and dirty legs. He's probably a few years older than Ella, and the thought of her niece's perfect little face and button nose that matches her sister's furthers the consuming fire, ravaged by anguish. She's being torn apart; she opens her eyes to find Peter's face through the haze of the building pressure as he's shouting at the child and pleading for her to listen to him and it's too much. She loses control.

The blackness is an overwhelming sensation of discharging heat and squeals that sound just like Ella's. She clings to Peter with every thread of strength she has left and keeps trying to tell herself to keep him safe, and like that, Pandora's Box opens, and she lets herself fall into the blackness, letting it drain her until there's nothing left, her last coherent thoughts are of peaches and Ella's soft giggling in the distance.


	30. Apocalypse Please, Part 1

He's been running so hard for so long that he's torn the few stitches that are left in his back, the blood trickling hot over the slope of his spine as he puts foot over foot across the pavement of the familiar New York street. His heart beats in tandem with each step, Massive Dynamic so close that he can almost taste the heat of desperation strangling him. The streets surrounding them had been spared the worst of the destruction they were met with leading into New York, and that gives Peter a small trickle of hope the building had something to do with it. Whether deserted or evacuated, abandoned cars are still parked or crashed into each other or into neighboring buildings, with doors hanging open and the damp smell of motor oil still clinging to the air.

It's a world without a living soul he learns the more he sees; all that's left are rotting corpses, burnt into the brick or crawling after him with hungry eyes and sunken dead faces. With sickening fury, he can't help but remember the words "_New York's overrun" _coming back to taunt him. The sky's a fiery orange on his back as the world's burning into night, the palest whispers of indigo glazing over the clouds in little fluffy bursts that look like cotton candy and he thinks this might be his sign that Walter's already dead, his crooked finger pointed from above as he laughs at the irony of it all.

Olivia's dead weight is slung haphazardly over his shoulder, her blood smeared across his chest and neck like paint as she fights to stay conscious. He's panicked enough to tell he's losing her the longer they move, the parts of her face not jigsawed in her own blood are bone white and they've had to stop along the last few miles so she could hack up blood.

He tries not to be distracted thinking about his own helplessness when she had lost control when they were confronted by the boy and his shaky rifle, the mask of a stranger with her eyes staring at him to do something. He couldn't put two words together before he felt the pressure push through him like an invisible bubble; popping his ears and making the hair on his arms stand at attention as he clung to her. The thrum of his pulse quickened; the smell of her blood splattering against his chest and the sound of a cry from the boy behind them when he erupted from Olivia's unintentional powers were all too much to process. It was all he could do to hold onto her for dear life, riding the roller coaster until she was spent enough to collapse and then the air was silent. When the soft curls of smoke trailed rings from her mouth that smelt like iron he flat panicked, his entire existence winking out when her chest stuttered and then stopped altogether.

Over the sounds of his ragged voice calling her name and the wet breaths he forced into her lungs came the familiar sucking noise lurking from behind the dark shadows he couldn't see, and he knew they had caused too much attention but he didn't bother to check for himself until he knew she was breathing again.

When he felt her pulse thready under his fingertips; the short, shallow gasps against his cheek, he knew she was hypovolemic but she was alive. He never looked back at the child, hoped it was at least fast for him. Olivia wouldn't be so lucky. He was forced to move when the first shadowy figure's step moved into focus, and he pulled Olivia's arm around his neck and ran.

It was awkward and slow, her slight weight monumental, coupled with his dehydration and the near agonizing pain in his back and hands. He relied more on his fear and adrenaline to carry him the few miles they had to travel to the only snowball's chance in hell they had left. They don't stop until they've cleared alleyway, it's littered with decomposing bodies, most dead while the livelier ones chew through the skin of the fallen. They don't linger.

They backtrack and turn around the corner, picking up speed to put distance between them and the alley. The new direction isn't better. Peter has to dig his heels into a hard stop when they're met with another wall of wandering zombies, thick as weeds and clamoring over one another like an angry tide thrashing against the shoreline. His eyes sweeps through the crowd, and he stops counting when he hits thirty and decides that's enough, dread filling him up and making him slower than he wants to be.

"Think it's best we move on," he mumbles against her forehead.

"Shit." he groans as they turn around to try their luck at 10th Avenues. His limbs scream their protest as he hoists Olivia higher to regain his grip as he takes them down another street. Everywhere he goes he feels the eyes following him, digging into his skin and he tries to hasten his steps. He's not paying attention and clips his shoulder with a side mirror of a crumbled truck, pulling a snarl from deep inside his chest as the pain blooms, forcing him to stop.

"Jesus Christ," he snaps as they take refuge behind the rusted SUV crushed into the front of the Winchester, a bar he remembers frequenting a lifetime ago when Olivia was at Massive Dynamic and he didn't yet have clearance. _I've got the goddamned clearance now_, he thinks ruefully.

Peter slides Olivia down as gently as he can muster against the wall to check her pulse; her breathing. He shields her when a shifter runs too close past the car, holding his breath until he hears the slap of the bare feet fade. A couple quick taps against her cheeks and she comes back to him, eyes fluttering.

"Hey, can you hear me in there?" he asks as he watches her slowly register him squatting in between her outstretched legs. Her irises are frighteningly sinister, black against the bloodshot and shadowed by the dark circles under her eyes. He tries to not look threatening.

"One of these days I'm going to wake up without being smacked like a girl." She mutters groggily, the thinnest of smiles skirting across her lips.

"Man handled." He corrects. Before he can breathe a sigh of relief, the echoing thunk of a shapeshifter clamors over the hood of the truck, digging its grey fingers into the metal as it sets its dead eyes on them, breath rattling through its ribcage. Peter's hand reaches for the crowbar in his belt, but something catches his attention. There's a bright yellow metallic piece of something sticking out against the grey background of the sunken face and for the second time that day, he hesitates. And for the second time, Olivia doesn't.

"Wait," he shouts to Olivia when he realizes his mistake, too late. There's the familiar crack in the air followed by the burst of flames that engulf the shapeshifter and car alike, swelling up into an angry mushroom cloud. Peter feels the heat, squashing himself against Olivia as the flames spread white-hot over his back. The shapeshifter's squeal doesn't last longer than a dreadful moment before it falls dead against the hood to slide out of sight, its blackened skin sticking to the hot metal of the car. Peter turns to find himself staring into Olivia's surprised eyes, her chin and neck wet with her blood and when she opens her mouth, he can see it coating her teeth.

"Didn't mean to," she wheezes. Wet coughs explode against Peter's ear.

To say Peter is a little freaked out is an understatement. He's scared fucking shitless, the heat so close he smells the singed hair. He squints into the gathering fire as it continues to consume what's left of the automobile and he has a new wrenching wave of understanding washing over him as he watches the bluish flames dance off the car.

"Gas tank," he says, like she'd be able to turn off the inferno just as easily as she turned it on. The fire continues to gain momentum, gathering speed from the bursts of hot air. He gives up trying to pretend to be calm for her sake, grabbing Olivia under the armpits to yank her up. He tries to protect himself as best he can, pushing through the flames that attack his already blistered hand covering his head, tucking a wobbly Olivia behind him as they start to run.

The smoke burns, stinging his eyes and pooling in his open mouth and breathing is intolerable.

"Go, go, go!" he shouts for no other benefit than his own, his burnt hands barely registering as a blip on his radar, and he doesn't stop running until they're clear of the smoke and the fire and he drags Olivia away from the loaded pistol that's ready to go off. The shapeshifters littering the streets that have noticed them twist their skulls curiously in their direction as they race by. They barely make it half a block before the deafening BOOM of the car exploding sends them diving into the pavement.

He sees stars for a second, the pain in his hands coming to the forefront, but it's nothing compared to the sickening pain in his back, sharp as a thunder bolt. He's able to pull his head around to find Olivia next to him, gathering herself as she coughs into the asphalt, the darkness of the blood dribbling like oil. He pushes himself up and stares dumbly at the fire blazing through the street. He's foggy and frozen when he first sees the woman emerge through the spreading fire, tilting his head as the world swirls around him.

The woman's dressed in a long black dress, blond hair hanging limply over her shoulders as she walks toward them with a cautiousness that's close to unnerving. Her velvet dress is tattered and torn, dragging behind her as she takes little shuffling steps; the thin braid of the scarf around her neck swaying from side to side with every staggering step she's able to take.

"Olivia," Peter manages, reaching out blindly to grasp Olivia's hunched shoulder. There's an unsettling lurch in his chest when the woman spots them, and Peter finally sees clearly what he assumed was a scarf around her throat is the noose of a rope clinging tightly to the skin around her neck, her bloated tongue engorged and lolling to one side as she hisses, eyes bulging.

"Time to go," he mutters to Olivia who's still crumbled beside him, her breaths coming out in rattling coughs. He pushes to his knees, running a hand across her back to find something to grab onto, several more shapeshifters who's avoided the fire now taking a renewed interest.

"Can't," Olivia gasps, making no move otherwise. "I can't." The woman in black's head twists to one side, eyes shifting to stare at Olivia, and Peter's got the crowbar out as he grabs Olivia's arm and pulls, never losing sight of the shapeshifter who's diverting its attention onto the sputtering Olivia beside him.

"Wasn't a request, sweetheart," he manages, "now or never." His blistered hands thrum in succession; a crescendo to the mounting pain as he pulls her upright.

"You'll get there faster on your own." She spits out the blood as she stands. The comment makes Peter irrationally angry, and he has to resist the urge to shake her. _Doesn't she understand?_

"That isn't the way this works." He snarls as he forces her to move her feet, _we're in this together _he wants to say, "We've made it this far, you can make it a few more blocks" is what he manages. She looks seriously at him for a moment, her onyx eyes unwavering as she nods, coating her hands in her blood as she tries to wipe the blood clean from her face.

"After you princess," she mutters and they're off stumbling again, the fire and shapeshifters at their backs, a crowbar's length away from the sagging remains of the woman shapeshifter as she stands and curiously watches them go.

He's got her body crushed against his chest as they head west on 18th Street. They're only a few blocks away from Massive Dynamic, so close that Peter's a lightning ball as they move, trying desperately to outpace the growing fire that seems to be following them like a needy puppy. He takes fevered glances at the passing landscape, feeling the heat on his neck, Olivia's blood drying as countless dead eyes stare back at him, back-lit by the spreading fire that's jumping from building to building and car to car and the few choices they have left aren't great. One direction is the army of undead; the other a growing fire that's spreading too rapidly to drag her through safely.

Olivia shakes loose of Peter's hold to plant her hands on her knees when they stop, letting him circle around for another escape route. The buildings are dark ominous creatures that stare back at them with shattered glass eyes and offer little help. The shapeshifters are everywhere, forced from their corners into the open by the growing fire on their tail. Shapeshifters wearing military uniforms, doctor's coats, and ratty tee-shirts. They weren't evacuated here, Peter realizes, they were quarantined; overrun. His stomach sinks.

"Tell me that a side effect of your super powers is flight." Peter deadpans as a male shapeshifters with half his face blown off, the assault rifle flapping off his hunched shoulder as it twists its head on its neck to notice them. Peter's got the crowbar ready, crashes it with a crunch when the man staggers to close.

"Will you at least count to three before you shove me to try?" Olivia suggests weakly, little pebbles of blood dripping off her chin.

He turns away from the fleshy lump that falls at his feet, the overwhelming urge to glance back at Olivia and laugh coming just in time, sees the lifeless face with its yellow teeth creep up behind her, silent as death, the billowing blond hair flapping in the hot air before she does, and for once Peter follows her advice.

Olivia's not expecting it when Peter slams hard into her side, shoving her off her feet and almost face-first into the dented metal of an old New York Times newspaper dispenser, pushing it with a squeal of metal onto its side. Old rotted newspapers explode into the deserted street, flapping soundlessly in the too-hot wind that follows the heat of the fire crackling through the bones of a crushed-in bus leading into the next intersection. The strap of her bag is digging hard into her shoulder, her chest crushing under the weight. The pain is bright, and she can barely breathe through the smoke that hangs low in the air, the fire making the heat suffocating. She pushes herself up, looking for Peter, expecting him to be beside her with that condescending look plastered across his face urging her to prepare to run again. The smoke chokes her as she finally finds him among the smoldering wreckage, and she strangles the scream that's threatening to rip from her throat.

Peter's on his back, his face almost totally obscured by the winding blond hair of the woman shapeshifter cascading over his shoulders as it thrashes on top of him, her black dress kicked up to expose the grey ragged skin of her mutilated legs, spindly as a spider's. Peter's pinned, the whites of his teeth bared as he keeps his hands clamped on either side of the snapping jaw that's centimeters away from tearing into his jugular.

The fear detonates inside her chest, the blinding light forcing her to her knees as her head attempts to split itself open. She feels her palms scrape against the ashy pavement as she doubles over. When she can manage to open her eyes, the shapeshifter is still there, untouched and lips brushing against Peter's skin.

"Don't do it," Peter grates. "Run, goddamn it!" The shapeshifter is still whole, unencumbered by the blazing fury Olivia wants to strike it down with. She feels Peter's rising panic, but there's not a trace of self-preservation in his mind from the immediate danger of his position. She realizes he's counteracting her and screaming at her _not to set fire_ in his mind. An overwhelming urge to escape washes over her that wasn't there before and she knows it's coming from Peter; he's telling her to run away.

She brushes the feeling away, stomping it down to push herself upright, blocking Peter's warning. She senses them before she sees the dozens of shapeshifters turning the corner of the street, the fire herding them from their hiding places to spill into the street, bumping into each other blindly they attempt to outrun the flames from her prior outburst. She feels strangely lucid; Peter's predicament focusing her into a singular pinpoint.

"Olivia, go!" Peter shouts again, twisting his neck when the broken teeth of the jaws snap a hair's breadth away from his skin. The shapeshifter's bony fingers scrabble on either side of her fumbling body, trying to assert control over her motor functions to tear into his flailing limbs. The way the woman's pressed against him with Peter's hands fanned on either side of her face almost looks romantic.

"Peter," Olivia says, the spark gone; the generator in her chest dead. She takes an unsteady step in his direction when Peter tries to kick at the body pinning him, grinding his foot into the sidewalk instead as he struggles. She feels like she recognizes the woman in black from a million years ago, the noose around her neck trapped between their pressed together chests.

"_Don't you fucking dare_," he snaps over the hissing, the hysterics in his voice freezing Olivia. The rest of the shapeshifters see them now, all heads turning to the direction of the hell that Peter's raising. "Don't be a goddamned fool, Olivia. Get out of here! GO!"

The moment the words leave his mouth…just like that, everything clicks all at once.

The noose. The woman. The wilted card with Death cloaked in black etched on it. It all makes sense now.

"_Having left the tree where he hung, the Fool moves carefully through a fallow field, head still clearing from the visions."_

She remembers it perfectly, her eidetic memory pulling the images to the forefront like they happened yesterday, sitting in that suffocating room filled with tapestries and cat piss. She finds sturdy footing in the direction where Peter and the woman are struggling, everything else completely blacked out except for his face. She doesn't even hear the exact words he's shouting, even though she senses them slicing through her with the brunt force of an axe.

"_The air is cold and wintry, the trees bare. He knows he has started on his spiritual journey in earnest, but feels empty and profoundly sad, as if he has lost something."_

She instinctively reaches into the open zipper of the bag slung around her shoulders, intuitively knowing what she'll find there. It's the vial of Walter's blood. At some point Peter's slipped it to her thinking she'd have the best chance out of the two of them to get it to Massive Dynamic. She almost smiles because it's all so clear now. She slips the bag soundlessly off her shoulders, taking great care to lay it gingerly on the trash covered street of what used to be her life. She leaves it as she continues on her way despite the clamoring bodies moving in their direction. They're not her concern now.

Peter's sweat-stained face stares at her like she's crazy, his cheeks flushed purple. The woman's skeletal face twists up at her, its hollowed eyes flickering with what could be confused with recognition.

"You sacrificed your old world. Your old self. Both are gone, dead." Olivia recites from memory as she kneels next to Peter on the street. All sound is blotted into a fuzzy silence, a trickling stream of consciousness.

"Don't be crazy," Peter snarls, the sound lost in the dead woman's throat. Olivia smiles reassuringly at him, wants to reach out to touch his prickly cheek. Peter's furious emotions flicker down her limbs, unable to let go of the shapeshifter in order to tackle her like Olivia knows he wants to.

"Behind you," Peter warns, breaking through the wall of Olivia's concentration and there's a little _poof _as the shapeshifter that's crept up behind them catches fire. Olivia doesn't even turn to look to aim, but the kickback lurches her forward dangerously close to the woman who twists from Peter's neck to snap at her.

Olivia's lunges forward, one last heave to plant her hands on either side of the woman's face as it strains against her hands. The woman's face feels soggy, like wet bread. If she digs her fingers in she's sure it'll come loose from the skull.

"Don't!" Peter snaps at her and she makes the mistake of looking at him then, hearing his unguarded, paralyzing fear and it's all she needs. The flicker in her chest ignites an angry pull that pushes up and outward.

The clamping bite of the shapeshifters jagged teeth ripping open her palm is hotter than she expects, and even with Peter's angry shouts begging for her concentration, but she doesn't get distracted and holds on tights He just doesn't understand yet. This is exactly how it's supposed to be.


	31. Apocalypse Please, Part 2

A/N: Thanks as always, to the brilliant 011 for taking my words and making them better. And thank you everyone reviewing, following and reading this monster.

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><p>There's a vibration in the heated air that sizzles between their three-way standoff; Peter's anguish ruffling Olivia's feathers distractingly while the pain from the shapeshifter's bite scorches her palm as she holds on tightly to its face to keep it away from Peter's throat. Her hands flush with the warmth of her focus and there's a sudden squeal and then a hiss as the woman's lifeless eyes roll back when her skull ignites into fire, little blue flames ravaging the decomposing skin of her face. Olivia's blood is sticky as it slides down the torn skin of her hand, but she doesn't let go until she's sure that the danger's over and the woman's dead. When she finally pries her fingers from the melted flesh of the shapeshifter's face, it slumps lifelessly onto Peter's chest and he kicks it away like it's still on fire, scrambling to his feet with such urgency that Olivia nearly gets kicked in his commotion.<p>

"No, no, no…" Peter's screaming in her ear, fingers shaking as he touches her face. "What have you done?" he shouts, finding purchase around her shoulders and he shakes her hard. "You should have run. Why didn't you run? Answer me goddamn it, why didn't you fucking run when you had the chance?"

Olivia doesn't respond fast enough and it infuriates Peter further, and he yanks her to stand to clamp his hand over the wound that's merrily oozing blood between his fingers. The fire rages around them, the fine lines of heat pressing in on them from all sides as if magnetized from the sinking sun as it retreats into the horizon. The fire barricades them at least from the swarm of hungry shapeshifters that are shuffling around the maze of smoke and flames, trying to get to them. But he knows that won't last long enough.

"Sonofabitch Olivia_,"_ he says in frustration, teeth gritted, "this is how this happens? You survive through everything else, dare to demand the same of me and then you make this stupid, stupid mistake? The lab with the hoards of them breaking in, the Resisters…you make it through everything to do _this. _One shifter, one_ fucking_ shapeshifter and you lose your fucking marbles this close." His anger's as thick as the black cloud of smoke that's blanketing the city into darkness. His face spells his devastation when Olivia finds the courage to finally look at him. He's babbling in long strings of words punched together; vainly trying to fix what she knows he can't. She understands that that's the most difficult for him to accept and she wishes she could explain it so he'd understand.

"We need to get back to my pack, the first aid kit…" he says with resolute authority, his hand shaking against the strain of his emotion. He twists his neck to try to figure out where they've lost it.

"We need to get to Massive Dynamic." Her answer's simple, turning the hand that's squashing hers to hold it, lacing their bloodied fingers together. Nothing's changed. His face turns from incredulous to furious, dotted by the ash that's falling around them like a summer's rain. The seriousness of her face chills him so he shakes her hand away. He wants to push her down and crush her bones; to drag her kicking and screaming by the hair to the front door of Massive Dynamic. Instead, he reaches for his sleeve and tears off a long strip, settling on tying it around her gash too tightly and hoping the pain's enough to snap her the hell out of whatever she thinks she's doing.

"We need to stop the bleeding." He mutters, eyebrow cocking toward a shapeshifter that tries to make it through the fire and fails; there's a pop of light as it goes off like a Roman candle.

"There's nothing you can do for it," Olivia says. It's painful. Breathing hurts. He doesn't look at her. But she hears him, bright as day.

"I realize you must care for me very much." She says suddenly, breaking through his resentment and his face finally crumbles. The bleeding won't stop. Neither will the pain. They both know this. "Yeah, your mindreading powers tell you that?" he snaps through red eyes, wiping his hand gruffly before stamping it into the grayish strip of material around her hand that's soaking through with her blood.

The fire expands around them, swallowing the shapeshifters who aren't moving fast enough to get out of the way. Another daring one tries to step over the charred remains of the woman whose face Olivia's melted, catching his pant leg in the flames.

"This is how it's supposed to be," Olivia assures him, the pain spreading from her hand to course up her arm and it's tough to keep it hidden from him. "You have to trust me."

"I don't know what you think you're doing, but I'm getting the hell off this crazy train and you'd better be ready to get off with me." Peter says angrily. "We're not going anywhere until the bleeding's stopped and you knock off talking like you're fucking Yoda."

"It's time to go to Massive Dynamic." She presses firmly. Peter's eyes go wide, dancing between her and the shapeshifters closing in around them. He's broken, she feels it. Feels him giving up despite the anger he's clinging desperately to.

"I won't leave you." He threatens, pressing both hands over hers in an attempt to staunch the blood that's running hot through her veins. "You stay with me. You promise me that, no matter what."

"I wouldn't expect anything less."

There are more shapeshifters that break through the fire; they should run. Peter doesn't move an inch.

She smiles at him, tipping forward to kiss him lightly, catching him off guard. Only when he wraps his arms around her does she finally close her eyes. The bloom is hot and familiar in her chest; in his chest too, a sonic boom of rippling force that pushes through both their bodies but she's not doing anything to control it. She hears the screams of bodies burning, smells their death. She feels Peter's pain, deep and dark but clouded by surprise. She hears his voice in her head, the surprised hitch of breath against her forehead, but she doesn't understand what he says, just feels his arms around her.

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><p>Their one chance ruined. All ruined.<p>

Peter might have thought she finally cracked, anyone else would dealing with the utterly horrific consequences of the end of the world. Anyone but Olivia. He was banking on her being the one that kept her shit together during this ordeal. Her never-failing optimism that Massive Dynamic still stood was so forceful that he couldn't not believe it himself. When she started spouting the "this is how it's supposed to be" bullshit, he couldn't help but get angry. Really angry.

He knew he was a dead man as soon as the woman had him on his back, her jaw closing in over his throat. He just hoped it gave Olivia enough time to get the hell out of there, to finish what they had set out to do. He'd been willing to die once before, with the barrel of the loaded shotgun pressed against his skull, he was ready for it again.

But when its lips parted and the shapeshifter's teeth closed on her skin instead he died inside. He fucking died.

There's no stopping the bleeding, no chance of reversing the virus raging through her system with the force and devastation of a Mack truck. His regret's a wild current; the only chance of an antidote wasted on Walter. The accompanying wash of guilt that surges over him at the thought is debilitating. He's ready for the shapeshifters to come; wants to be torn apart and his guts pulled out. There's just too much injustice in the world to live in it now. So he just pulls her to his chest and waits, because honestly he doesn't know what else to do.

"You were supposed to make it. I put all my chips on you." He finally mutters when the exertion of keeping his anger in fails. Either she'd made it, or none of them would. He was willing to give up everything to the universe if only she lived. And again, like with everything else, the universe spectacularly gave him the finger.

The fire's hot on his back, the shapeshifters' burning smell horrible. He's ready to die, comes to peace with the fact that he'll die right alongside her. Maybe if they hold out long enough she'll transform and chew his face off herself. Her breathing hitches as she struggles to draw in air, gripping his forearms as the spasms wrack her chest, her calm resolve cracking.

"Liv," he says as soothingly as he can muster, eyes darting between her face, the fire and the shapeshifters. He can't protect her from any of the danger. So he keeps his arms around her, brings her against his chest and just holds her there, preparing himself.

But then something… unexpected happens.

He feels his limbs tingling like they've fallen asleep, little prickles along the pores of his skin. There's a hot pull like someone's rewired the circuits in his brain and he suddenly feels_…everything. _His brain screams inside his head, flashes of light and sound and feeling and he realizes that he's feeling her, feeling Olivia: the consuming pain; the sensibility of her actions; the swirl of affection that must be for him. It's a thrilling shock to his spine; someone turning his electrical impulses on high. The feeling is insane, the wave of nausea tilting him and he clings to her like he's about to spin out of orbit. Her eyes are closed but his are wide open. The feeling passes quickly and he's left alone with the same empty feeling as before. He wants her back. Olivia smiles once at him, like she knows what happened, fresh blood from her nose trickling down her face as she slumps against him.

Peter's left alone. He twists his head, counting the shapeshifters surrounding them. Olivia's out cold; limp in his arms and he's momentarily lost. He murmurs her name gently into her hair, feeling her face cooling under his fingertips. It won't be long before she's dead. They have to move now. He notices a shapeshifter as it moves into his focus, a big brute of a man trailed by others and he realizes they've all stopped; staring at them, tilting their heads like they've done something curious and they're trying to figure it out. Peter bares his teeth, feeling his anger prickle the lines of his vision; the violation of losing his only hope causes the heat to rise and the closest shapeshifter trembles. His surprise only seems to increase the pinpoint of pressure, his neurons rapidly firing and his vision becoming blurry and the shapeshifter explodes from the inside out, splattering the others.

The heat subsides and his vision clears and he's left, slack-jawed and delirious at what he's witnessed. The other shapeshifters seem to hesitate, eyeing the bits of blown up shapeshifter that's ruined their clothing.

"Did you see that?" Peter asks, chagrined. He looks to Olivia's sickly face as her head drops backward, touching her once to feel her almost nonexistent pulse. Panic almost takes him then. He shifts her weight onto him, wrapping her arm gingerly over his shoulder and readies himself to finish the short race to Massive Dynamic. The Hail Mary if there ever was one. Whatever confusion he had caused to the shapeshifters, it ends the moment they start to run.

He explodes three more before they reach the end of the block.

Peter feels as though they're trying to stay ahead of the apocalypse itself. The fire's stifling; the air hot against his face. The sky overhead is shadowed by lavender, the orange almost completely blotted out like a dying ember against the horizon. The darker it gets the more terrifying New York becomes; shapeshifters moving soundlessly save for the grunts or an intake of breath, all moving with him, after them as he drags a pale Olivia to the one last Hail fucking Mary they've got left.

"We're almost there," he grunts, teeth clenched and jaw aching. Olivia doesn't stir beside him and he doesn't know if it's good or bad so he doesn't concentrate on it. Instead, he focuses his attention on the scrape of his feet against the rubble covering the asphalt, the ashy taste of sulfur heavy on his tongue and the memory of her weight on top of him.

"Stay with me," he pleads. "We're so close."

His knees ache, his shoulders are close to shattering under the pressure and pain and the weight of Olivia's deteriorating body crushing his chest.

They swing around the next corner, the hungry shapeshifters on his heels and he finds the street almost deserted except for the billowing smoke creeping over the buildings and he feels like he's being herding along. He's maneuvering on familiar grounds, finding the coffee shop that used to sit at the corner of 10th Avenue where he'd buy Olivia's coffee: black; one sugar. It's a broken pile of cinders and concrete, a beacon to his last chance to save Olivia.

He's so intent on the destination that he loses track of his surroundings, never seeing the sturdy wall of bones and skin that collides into him and takes the air straight from his lungs as they crash to the ground and his grip on Olivia falters. Olivia can't brace herself, landing with a sickening thud and he falls beside her, rolling onto his back under the blackening sky.

He reflexively reaches for her, calls her name but there's a white pain in his arm that demands his attention. He peels his eyes away from Olivia to kick off the body of the bone-thin gaunt woman shapeshifter that's clamped its jaw into his forearm, taking with it a ragged piece of Peter's flesh. He doesn't even have a chance to scream.

"Peter," he hears Olivia's voice croak beside him. He kicks frantically at the mouth of the shapeshifter that's_ chewing_ on him, crushing it's skull as he propels himself away. He sees spots pop in front of his eyes, blurring the bloodied face of the woman before she bursts into flames. The smell of decomposing skin burning unnerves him more than the pain that's racing through his chest.

And the pain is more than he could have believed. He's too shell-shocked to do anything coherent, heaving in smoky breaths as he tries to gasp through his rising panic, his hand clamping on the bleeding mess of his arm. He gives himself three seconds. Three seconds to breathe. Three seconds before he needs to get to his feet. Massive Dynamic is too close. This doesn't change anything, he still needs to get her there. He breathes deep and on _three_ he pushes himself up, grabbing Olivia and fighting to get to his feet. The sun is gone, the violet sky eclipsing out whatever light they had left.

"Bad?" she asks. He doesn't dare look.

"Just a scratch." He lies without batting an eye.

They stumble together, Olivia's shaking limbs reverberating against his chest but the feeling that the building is so close keeps him moving. _They're going to be able to reverse this._ _The Cortexiphan will save her,_ he keeps thinking to himself. _There was a reason she was chosen for the trials. _Just another corner, one more block and they're there. The bite is frighteningly painful, as is the quickness in which it spreads through the crevices of his bones.

The street's deserted, the purple moonlight refracting onto the streets to cast the buildings in a solemn glow. He feels the wash of excitement as they clatter along the familiar landscape, their footsteps so loud but he's beyond caring. Just a few more feet…

He's ready for the outpouring of Massive Dynamic employees to wave them in, to have guns and bulldozers and flame-throwers on standby for their rescue. He shifts Olivia's weight, waving the arm not pouring blood out into the darkened shadows where the building is.

"We're here!" he shouts maniacally, "out here!" It doesn't matter that he's broadcasting their location to whatever shapeshifters they haven't yet attracted; as long as Massive Dynamic hears him.

The smoke clears enough to see the outline of Massive Dynamic clearly. The air leaves his lungs and he feels punch-drunk, drowning in hysterics where he stands. Where the once majestic Massive Dynamic building stood not more than a year ago, is now reduced into ashes and broken pieces of gravel at Peter's feet. It's gone.

"No." He hisses, frantically looking for the end of this nightmare.

"NO." His voice booms into the heavens when he realizes there's no waking. The pain is a terrible as being punched in the throat. Every bone shakes and he can't find it in him to run from the shapeshifters closing in.

Olivia's breathing stills, her eyes rolling back. Everything's gone. Their only hope, their only chance, is a smoldering heap of nothing. Peter's last thread severs, his knees buckle and he's crumbling, crumbling down and taking Olivia with him. He breathes in the night air. He rolls onto his back so he can see the sky swallowed in darkness, wants his eyes to be wide open when he dies. Somehow, it's important to him.

The fire that's caught up to them flickers brightly against the clouds, warm against his face.

"I'm sorry." He says aloud. What he's sorry for, and who it's directed at, he's not sure. There's so much to apologize for. He twists his neck in time to see Olivia's eyes, the whites bloodied and unseeing, staring out at the nothingness surrounding her. He thinks of the first time he'd ever laid eyes on her. Her blond hair and freckles and wicked smile warms him from toes to chest. Every thought, every dream, every unfinished sentence begins and ends with her beautiful face; her soft lips on his neck and the scratch of her nails in his hair. He forces himself to focus on her smiling, of her crying, of her cursing like a sailor and taking angry swings at him. He lingers on her rough kisses, her strong legs straddling his hips. It's all the same. It's all Olivia. It's his Olivia.

"They're here." She suddenly says. There are sounds of footfalls all around them, getting closer. "They're here somewhere, I feel them."

"They'll come." She finally croaks, her voice still defiant, even now. He sees the green in her eyes for the first time and he's glad.

"They will." He says and he reaches for her hand, twining their bloodied fingers together. The pain in his arm reaches his chest and it's nearly crippling. His spine twists and rocks and pulls a cough that's from deep inside his lungs like he's drowning. She smiles at him, opens her mouth to say something, but she doesn't have to; he_ feels_ it.

"I know," he answers her half-lidded eyes, "Me too." And he smiles back, tilting his head to the sky, the sounds of the shuffling footsteps closing in on them sounding just like Walter in his slippers. He chooses then to look into the skyline, his smile never diminishing as he thinks of Walter and hopes he'll get to see him again.

With lingering thoughts of Walter and Olivia's hand crushing his, he closes his eyes; listening to the sound of the apocalypse take him.


	32. Apocalypse Please, Part 3

The air's stale and flat and missing the smokiness that he remembers from the fires; there are blurry sounds he can't piece together, hard consonants and stretched vowels. The clicking clucks of chickens. Peter feels like he's floating on a cloud; the ground too comfortable against his back and he tries to piece together what's happening.

Being dead isn't quite like what he expected it would be. Though, he supposes, it's more likely he's a zombie by now than dead. Strangely, he doesn't feel like a zombie.

Would he really be able to tell the difference though?

There are so many unanswered questions that he's hoping that he'll have a chance to ponder them all before he loses all traces of cognitive ability.

Walter's voice suddenly cuts through the murkiness he finds himself in. "All these primary impulses, not easily described in words, are the springs of man's actions." Walter would always quote at him when he was a kid, finger wagging and voice stern. The voice that would come out of his father's mouth that became synonymous with "bothered." He didn't really think much of Einstein when he was a child. He has a newfound appreciation of the meaning behind the words, now that the actions in his life have cost him the people he loves dearly.

From his cloud he hears voices, just forming at the edges of his consciousness.

"I think I've rescued most of the skin on his back. That infection was pretty gruesome, but the antiserum is speeding the process substantially," says a male voice that's unerringly familiar, though Peter can't begin to place it. Maybe it's a zombie. He speaks zombie now, apparently. Interesting.

"Thank you," says a new voice. A woman's voice. He hears footsteps and a door closing.

"Mr. Bishop." Says the same female voice.

The sound's a little clearer, but it still doesn't make any sense. Who's calling him? It's not Olivia's voice. Is she a zombie too? He tries to move his arms, to reach out to her but his arms are heavy; restrained. He feels the first jolt of panic.

"Peter."

When he opens his eyes he's staring into the buzzing florescent lights that hum so low he can barely pick up the sounds. The room he finds himself in is bleached white, small and set up like a mini-hospital space, the machines whirling above his head stainless steel, fast and efficient looking. It's probably good that he's here because damn if everything doesn't feel like it's been set on fire. He's in a bed, a small one, a thick grey blanket covering him from the waist down. He's bare-chested; scrubbed raw in the places he can see, the skin pink.

He investigates his limbs, finding tube after tube winding around the bedside leading up into a standing IV drip, the bag attached to it bright red. One particular tube leads down to his left arm, the source of the new wave of pain that's thrumping through his arm. He tries to pull his arms away but finds them latched tightly to the sides of the bed. The panic deepens.

The Resisters must have gotten them.

"Merely a precaution until we could gauge the effects of the Cortexiphan antiserum on your system." The voice says calmly as he strains against the restraints, pulling them hard as he tries to free himself. When the pain shoots around his arms the voice continues, "I wouldn't suggest struggling, Brandon worked hard on your stitches and we wouldn't want his work to be for naught."

He recognizes the voice, pulls his face away to find her standing a few feet from his bed.

"How're we feeling, Dorothy?" Nina Sharp asks from her corner.

* * *

><p>Peter attempts to shake loose the fogginess of the air, feeling the disorientation settle around his shoulders. His tongue is stiff, his mouth stuffed full of cotton.<p>

So they haven't been captured by Resisters. And he's not a zombie. There aren't many other options left.

"What happened?" he manages. Nina finally approaches the bed, arms tight around the starched white scrubs she's wearing. She's has on the same black leather gloves he remembered but he's not reassured.

"Olivia?" he says with a start, his heart hammering when he remembers Olivia's bloodied face.

"Ms. Dunham is recuperating." Nina says but doesn't elaborate. Peter's head squashes against the pillow, the relief so strong and overwhelming that he feels like sobbing. She was right. He can't fucking believe it.

"Can I see her?"

"You raised quite the alarm upon your arrival," Nina continues, delicately sidestepping Peter's question. She looks much older, her red hair close-cropped to her skull to make her look much more severe than he ever remembers. "My people were barely able to get to you before you burned what's left of the rebuilding efforts."

Peter's mind races through whatever they have him on, and if his lazy limbs are any indication, it's much stronger than morphine.

"Rebuilding? I don't know if you've noticed this or not, but New York is gone, Massive Dynamic a pile of rubble. Not to mention the few thousand shapeshifters out there that don't give a shit about rebuilding." He's not feeling particularly trusting being restrained. "When can I see Olivia?"

Nina's smile is tight on her face, the wave of cool detachment never wavering. "Soon," she says as she closes the distance between them.

"There's significantly less of the shapeshifter population since the two of you managed to burn through a good portion of them. And don't forget where you are now, Mr. Bishop." She motions to the bed he's lying in. "Appearances can be deceiving, but I assure you that Massive Dynamic is still very much alive and well."

Peter can't seem to form words, to take in what's being said.

"The building…I saw it…" he tries, needing to be able to dispute it because otherwise it makes much more sense that he's lost his fucking mind.

"The building is gone, sadly yes." Nina's casual tone stiffens, the first hint of remorse detected in her steel eyes. "The renegade armies made swift work of it early on, I'm afraid. Felt that we were to blame for the…"

"Zombie infestation?" Peter fills in somberly. Nina's face turns into one of stifled bemusement.

"Not you too," she comments, "Brandon has taken to calling them as such, yes."

"Are you?" Peter asks, trying to work in the feeling to his hands.

"Responsible? Of course not." She says with a sense of finality. She notices Peter's discomfort and works at loosening the restraints around his wrists.

"I apologize for the use of the restraints, but we needed to make sure the antiserum worked before we let you free in the facility. You understand." As soon as the leather's cut free the blood rushes back into his hands.

"Antiserum? As in an antidote?" Peter says, finally able to lift his arm enough to see the work that's been done on his ravaged forearm. He'd almost forgotten about the bite in all the confusion, the skin now stretched tight over where he remembers the missing flesh, black stitching tracing a pattern along the ragged bite-mark. He doesn't recognize his own arm.

"It worked?" he says, staring at his arm in amazement.

"Are you a zombie?" She asks and Peter grins. A new thought strikes him.

"Walter?" He chokes on the word when he pulls his focus away from the reconstructed limb.

"I have a team traveling to the lab right now to retrieve your father. Olivia informed us that the initial antidote you administered at least slowed the process. Thanks to Olivia, I'm confident we'll get to him in time." Peter's vision turns blurry as Nina says the words, the thought of Walter surviving, the reality that he's alive and Olivia's survived bubbles up and he starts to laugh without comprehending why. It's a hard, belly-wrenching laugh that he can't turn off, pushing his fingers into his closed eyes to wipe away the wetness that stains his cheeks. The fit doesn't last long, but he feels the torment washing down his shoulders and off his chest and it makes him near delirious with happiness. When he's finally able to open his eyes again, Nina looks about as comfortable as if he just pissed the bed. He's so content he doesn't give a damn.

"When can I see her?" he asks again through watering eyes, needing to feel the smoothness of her skin to see for sure that she's alive. Nina's eyes shift away for just a moment too long and Peter's bathed in cold water.

"Nina, when can I see her?" Peter's voice takes a deadly calm tone, his head vibrating. She lifts an arm, palm flat like she's expecting him to pounce on her.

"There were complications," Nina says by way of an explanation but Peter's already shot halfway up in bed, the monitors beeping at the bedside. "Wait." She orders when he attempts to pull the tubing straight from his arm. He's not exactly sure what he's going to do once he gets out of the bed, he'll figure it out once he sees the full extent of the damage.

"Wait." Nina repeats. "Let me explain before you tear your stitches. The ones in your back were infected, so you need to calm down or Brandon will have to come back and do the skin grafts all over again and you'll be no closer to seeing Olivia."

Peter's fingers linger over the IV lines he was about the yank from his vein, but he pauses enough to give her a few seconds. Nina visibly relaxes when Peter doesn't tear the room apart.

"She was also bit, you must know that. The combination of the activated Cortexiphan in her blood and nervous system, coupled with the preliminary antidote you extracted from Walter's blood were essential in creating an anti-agent for the virus; it's the reason why you're alive right now. It's why we're going to be able to save your father as well. It's the reason why you've both survived."

Peter's fingers pinch the tube, showing his lack of satisfaction with her answer. "She's okay?" he asks, trying to keep the fact that his hand is shaking hidden.

"You now also have Cortexiphan in your system, and with your connection to Agent Dunham… it would be advisable not to challenge that connection just yet."

That was enough to stop him for a few moments.

"I'm…confused." He finally confesses before spiraling back on track. It's been too tough to not be suspicious. So he lies. "What connection?" Despite the fact that Massive Dynamic apparently survived and rescued them; he still has a strange fear of divulging any secrets to Nina. But he releases the tube and Nina appears to breathe a little easier.

"Mr. Bishop, Olivia did some extraordinary things that need to be investigated—"

Peter opens his mouth but Nina cuts him off.

"—We know about the fire already. There's no need to protect her from us. We're not the enemies here." She counters, but Peter isn't entirely convinced. She looks for some sign of argument or admittance. He gives her neither. She lets out an irritated sigh before she continues.

"There are other traits associated with Cortexiphan, most of which we've been able to regulate—"

"Regulate?" Peter says with a trifling laugh. "How do you begin to understand, let alone regulate what the hell's happening to Olivia?"

Nina's lip quirks.

"We're Massive Dynamic. What don't we do?"

Peter grinds down on his jaw. Satisfied, Nina continues.

"What we're unsure of is the extent of the connection that she shares with you. How that connection affects her abilities; her intuitive impulses. She feels quite strongly about you, you know." She says as an after-thought.

"So let me get this straight," Peter pieces together, "you're afraid of what exactly? She'll blow up the building if she sees me?" He's not positive if he thinks she's right or not. He just wants to see Olivia.

"I'm very partial to not losing another facility at this point."

Nina tilts her head, the smirk that was hiding now creeping across her lips and she finally lays a gloved hand on Peter's good hand sympathetically.

"She's already blown through two of our medical facilities while Brandon was working on you. It was quite the added pressure for the young man. I don't know how she'll react when she sees you're awake."

Peter's chest swells, and he can't help but put the pieces together in a way he never thought about before.

"The formula we brought you worked, yes?"

Nina's eyes flash.

"Does saving the world earn me a little gratitude?" he asks. Nina looks ruffled. "That is what we did, right? The reason why Olivia was selected for the trials as a kid, why she's alive right now and why there's a serum that's going to essentially save this whole godforsaken planet. You were tagging the dead ones that didn't stay dead; I saw one of them out there. Your whole goddamned facility has been tracking this for a while. You had an idea that this would one day happen." Peter doesn't wait for an answer. He doesn't need one.

"So since you appear to be obligated to us, I'd go get Olivia Dunham."

There isn't any more argument after that.

* * *

><p>Olivia had in fact set fire to the rooms they placed her in. She'd been conscious when the white shapes swept in like ghosts when Peter had collapsed in the rubble. When she finally saw them, suited in plastic biohazard suits complete with head pieces and air filters, she reached for Peter's hand beside her, hoping he'd see them too. That's when she saw the bloody mess that was his arm and she was sure the world was about to explode. There were loud bangs of gunfire as the suited figures shot into the crowd of shapeshifters that were moving in, splattering them against the rubble of the city, and she clung to Peter with a heated ferocity, breathing in deeply his scent and reminding herself that <em>they weren't a threat, they weren't a threat, they weren't a threat<em>. It wasn't until she saw the familiar "M" patches on their chests that she released her iron-clad grip enough to let them be hauled away to safety.

The last thing she remembered was telling them about the antidote in the bag that wasn't far behind, that they needed to test her blood to finish synthesizing it. It wasn't until they made it through the hum of the electric fence and she saw Brandon's face behind his own facemask that she finally let herself smile.

"You need to get to Walter Bishop." She had said. She saw the way his eyes swiveled between her bitten palm, to the vials of Walter's blood they retrieved from the bag and finally settling on her face with a smile that was stifled behind hard plastic. His voice was muffled by the mask he was wearing.

"We're on it."

She was out for a full three days after that.

She was confused when she woke in a room similar to the one Peter found himself in, blinking through a blinding migraine and desperate to see his face, to know they got to him on time. She told Nina everything she knew: the Cortexiphan, the lab, the zombies, her connection to Peter, everything. After the headaches came the nosebleeds, followed by stomach-flipping nausea that sparked little bursts of fires to particularly flammable objects when she was at her most aggravated. She was forced to submit to mind-numbing brain scans and neurological tests to scope out the extent of the trauma; Brandon telling her with frightened eyes and wrapped in a flame retardant suit that the results were good. No permanent damage.

She wasn't shocked to learn she'd acquired a certain amount of immunity against the toxin; that they'd tested and synthesized her blood and said they were working on administering it to Peter, but not to get her hopes up.

"His wounds were critical," Nina had said even before Olivia could get out of bed. "We're doing everything we can, but if the virus spreads before we're able to repair the damage…" then she had trailed off and the room around them burst into hot, blue flames.

They moved her to a new room after that. Nina peered in from a window that separated them.

When she was told that she couldn't see Peter for a second day, her fury rippled and she blew the window out and lit the whole room on fire, blackening it like burnt toast. It took six fire extinguishers to control the blaze and she knocked herself out for another twelve hours.

She made the same request as soon as her eyes opened on the third day and she could speak. Nina must have thought it was safer to grant her request than to keep cleaning up after her.

* * *

><p>Now she stands outside of the small hallway leading into a room she hasn't seen before, wearing a set of scrubs from Massive Dynamic, her bare feet padding across the floor as she waits for the okay to go in and see him. Brandon's in with him now, changing his bandages and she's giddy with excitement waiting for him to finish.<p>

Nina's beside her in the hallway, looking harassed. "You feel you're up to this?" She says. "There won't be much we can do in case of an outburst." She cautions. Olivia gives her a nasty look.

"It'll be more dangerous to keep us apart at this point." She says pointedly. She's bouncing on the balls of her feet. It's hard to keep her emotions buried being this close. She almost tastes him on the tip of her tongue.

Brandon opens the door and Olivia stands on her tiptoes to look over his shoulder, the white linens of his scrubs in the way.

"All done Agent Dunham, he's good to go." he tells Olivia with a smile. Nina gives him a cold stare and his smile falters, "If it's cleared with Ms. Sharp." He tacks on.

Olivia doesn't wait for the ok; she pushes her way past Brandon and Nina into the room. Peter's taste seeps into her skin instantly, his scent smoky on her; familiar.

He's hard to miss in the small room, propped up on the bed and covered in twisting white tubes. He's wearing the same blue scrubs that she is, the space of his forearm wrapped in gauze, matching the one that's wrapped around her repaired hand. She smiles when she sees his newly-cropped hair.

"Hey," she says as she stops at the foot of his little bed, hesitating. "Funny, we're in the midst of a zombie apocalypse and you stop to get a haircut?" She feels him beaming over every nook and cranny even though he doesn't crack a smile.

"Brandon has many talents," he says casually as he runs the fingers of his good hand through the shortened strands. "I almost feel back to normal."

"You were never normal." She says and he breaks into a smirk.

"I miss the long hair." She says.

"No you don't." He says back. She pushes the fingers of her good hand through the strands, testing their durability and she's rewarded with his closed eyes and his reflected enjoyment as he leans into her hand.

His eyes are glassy when he opens them and he's looking at her…differently. She feels it. He looks like he's never taken a good look at her. And the more he looks at her perfect pink face the more he feels his chest tightening and his throat squeezing.

"Thank you," he finally tells her, voice thick with sentiment and a touch of humor. She doesn't ask what for. He answers anyway.

"Where would you like me to start?" he says, wrapping a hand around her wrist. "For everything. For believing in the impossible. For saving Walter, saving me, saving the world. For making me believe even when I wanted to give up." He rattles through everything as quickly as he can even though there's more he wants to say. He wants to pull her to him, but he keeps himself reined in enough to say the things he should have said before. She smiles, about to say something.

"What I'm trying to say is…thank you for proving me wrong." He adds.

"You weren't yourself." She answers, running her hand over the material of the blankets, feeling little sparks as she touches him. It's hard not to touch him.

"Lucky for me, you were." He says, and when her good hand skirts near his hip he squeezes it tight. She feels the wave of emotion that's so powerful she nearly jumps.

"Do you feel that?" she asks, alarmed.

He's there, everywhere, inside her bones and she clings to it as hard as he clings to her hand, and she knows he feels it too.

"Can you…" she asks, trying to figure out the words that are pressing together inside her head. His voice is delicate along her ears. "Can you hear me?" she finally is able to ask. His smile is bright and she feels that too.

"Nothing specific." He says mockingly.

She stops waiting. She dives onto the bed and kisses him fiercely.

"What about the apocalypse?" He says before she covers his lips with his mouth.

"Screw the apocalypse," she answers, already reaching for his face to pull it back to hers. "We're taking the day off."

Somewhere outside a whole city block goes up in flames.

* * *

><p>Eight months later:<p>

"You sure you want to do this?" Peter asks, holding the door open to let Olivia through ahead of him.

Olivia gives him a sarcastic smile, pushing the hair that's barely touching her shoulders away from her neck and tucking it behind her ear before reaching for his hand and pulling him inside behind her.

"Turn back if you're scared, Cowardly Lion." She taunts him with an eyebrow.

Peter returns her smirk ten-fold. "Not on your life," he growls. "I just happened to be enjoying my nap with the blanket Astrid made for me, and I'm eager to get back to it."

"Astrid must be so proud." Olivia mutters as he presses his lips against her hair as they stand inside the small space of the fortune teller's studio, ironically named _Apocalypse Within_.

In the wake of the "Event" when the shapeshifter threat was finally contained (the official story blamed on a devastating outbreak of rabies, the inspiration funded by Massive Dynamic) and the human survivors began to trickle back into the cities, new churches and fortune tellers began to pop up on every corner, much to Peter's disgust and Walter's delight.

"You need a push?" he asks after a long moment as she looks around, hesitating in the middle of the room and he feels her waiver as she takes in the pinkish walls and incense-layered tapestries.

"From you? No thanks." She says with a frightened face as she runs her fingers along the walls, trying to sense out something familiar. There's no cat piss stink this time and she's glad for it. But she feels more nervous than she expects.

"You can stare down a pack of brain-eating zombies, but it's a fortune teller that scares you?" Peter says from his spot, his arms crossed as she investigates her surroundings. Her fingers linger on a small crystal figurine of a phoenix rising from orangey-red flames. She pauses, memorizing the corners. "You don't have anything to prove, Olivia." Peter tells her, even though he knows her well enough to know she won't listen to him. Especially when her mind is set. But he wants to give her an out if she needs it. Of course she doesn't. She leaves the figurine to approach Peter, wrapping her arms around his shoulders, the white blotch of scar tissue on her hand bright under the pinkish lights. It doesn't bother her.

"And disappoint Walter? He was so excited about this I could barely keep him from coming with us." she says softly, running her nose along his cheek. Peter instantly stiffens, trying to stifle the grin.

"He'll get over it. Plus, he still owes me for the blanket."

"Olivia Dunham?" wafts the voice from the short, squat man over the nose of his tortoise-framed glasses. "You're up next, sweetheart."

Olivia's arms stiffen around Peter's neck.

"It's just a fortune teller," Peter says. "What's the worst that can happen?" He gives her a quick peck on the lips and pushes her toward the door, hands firm on her shoulders.

"On three…"

* * *

><p>AN: This story is dedicated in its entirety to my editor and dear friend, CoffinWood. If I didn't have the year's worth of support and inspiration (and the occasional much needed kick in the ass), this story would have never been, or, Walter would have died and Massive Dynamic would have never survived. And to everyone who's taken the time and effort to stick with this story and characters: thank you!


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